


The Tales a Dead Man Tells

by Meextraordinaire



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ayda is Babey, Bill Seacaster should be his own content warning, Canon Autistic Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Light Angst, Pirates, Pre-Canon, Sensory Overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28241559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meextraordinaire/pseuds/Meextraordinaire
Summary: The great pirate city of Leviathan has been sailing on the salty waves of the Celestine Sea for centuries and will go on to do so for many more. But ten years ago, before intrepid heroes and before buccaneer buddies, the den momentarily shook in its floating foundations when its monarchy was toppled.Bill Seacaster had no intention of killing Leviathan's tyrant king when he arrived on the island that fateful morning. But after meeting Garthy O'Brien's ward, a lonely six year old girl called Ayda, Bill finds himself wrapped up in something bigger than himself. Ayda is determined to go with him every step of the way.The unlikely duo has to navigate their way through a place where everyone has it out for them, and might just change it for the better.
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort & Garthy O'Brien, Bill Seacaster & Ayda Aguefort
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14
Collections: Dimension 20 Big Bang





	1. You And Me And The Devil Makes Three

**Author's Note:**

> Ahoy mateys, weigh yer anchor and hoist the mizzen, cuz it's time for some pirate shenanigans!  
> This fic was written for the Dimension 20 Big Bang of 2020 is and a part of a collection full of wonderful stories. My amazing partner for this project is Micah, who you can find on Tumblr as a-boy-called-micah (https://a-boy-called-micah.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Chapter title is from a song with the same name by Ye Banished Privateers.
> 
> Enjoy!

* * *

_It’s a place to make a fortune, on expence of those less fortunate_

_A place to lose yer savings, in a single bet_

_A place for new beginnings, a place of filth n' self-made men_

_A place for early endings, at best friends cutlass' end_

_Welcome to Tortuga_ , Ye Banished Privateers

* * *

Leagues from any kind of civilization oppressed by laws and order, Leviathan was calmly floating on the saltwater waves of the Celestine Sea, a mesmerizing sight that still brought tears to the eyes of nostalgic raiders and horrified merchants. Parrots, seagulls, albatrosses, and a few stray aarakocra were gliding through the air, high above the violence that was the hustle-and-bustle of the pirate den.

Galleyard, located in the center of the city, was one of the better parts of the city of Leviathan. The surrounding neighborhoods were sought-after, and the only ones who could afford to live there were either the most successful pirates with their retirement plans all figured out or the most violent ones that no sensible soul would dare to kick out. It was a sunny afternoon and a lot of folks were out on the streets. Walking around, one would hear and see people of dozens of different nationalities and ethnicities.

One of these folk was a young man who was softly humming a shanty to himself, swaying back and forth on his feet. He was dressed in the classic ragged pirate look, striving for the same level of toughness every pirate on Leviathan needed to cloak themselves in to survive. The boy was heading out of the Gold Gardens, the only establishment on the island that could be called classy. As most people were when they left the pleasure house, he was more than a little tipsy and thus missed the figure making their way in the opposite direction. He bumped into the man and dropped his half-filled bottle of exquisite rye whiskey.

“Oi, watch where you’re—” he slurred, trailing off when he got a good look at the man. All color left his face when he realized he was finding himself only inches away from a grinning mouth missing several teeth that belonged to William “Bill” Seacaster, dreaded captain of the Hangman and scourge of the Celestine Sea. The boy mumbled a quick apology and ducked under Bill’s arm, all but running away.

Bill Seacaster snorted, the corners of his mouth pulling up. It was good to know that his reputation was still intact, even after such a long time away from Leviathan. The Hangman was still sailing strong and pirate business was booming, but he hadn’t had the chance – or inclination – to visit the den for quite a while.

As he strode over the main thoroughfare he fished a ruby the size of a doorknob out of his coat pocket and started casually tossing it into the air and catching it with his gloved right hand. It was a reckless and prideful indulgence with all the jealous hungry eyes upon him, but Bill reveled in it. _Just dare to lay yer hands on me, Leviathan_ , he challenged. _Let’s see what would happen._

The jewel, called the Seed of the Underwater Forest, was the reason why Bill had returned to Leviathan. It was incredibly cursed; poor Old Mickers, who had found the booty first and carelessly nicked it out of the rotted chest like the bloody idiot he was, would probably never see the light of the sun again.

Bill didn’t like curses. They complicated what should be a treasure stolen fair and square, and after encountering ten of them in as many years he had grown sick of the inconvenience they brought. So after his fourth curse he had arranged for an address that he could visit whenever he found himself in this particular situation.

It had been almost two years since Bill had visited the Gold Gardens, and it seemed that the latest – and, if everything had gone according to plan, final – renovations were finished. The main entrance hall was crowded with people, chatting excitedly about whatever rumors were spreading around the city this day. The bouncers – a burly goliath and a bird-of-paradise aarakocra – were the only people allowed to draw weapons within the doors of the establishment. Bill passed them with a slight nod of his head, which they politely returned.

Pocketing the gem again, Bill opened the door to the bar, the central room of the establishment and where the owner did most of their business.

In his adventurous lifetime Bill had danced with luxury as much as despair, but no place in the world could ever compare to the Gold Gardens. Velvet curtains draped over portholes that looked out over the lush gardens decorated the wall alongside artworks and trophies. A rich crimson and flea-less carpet covered the entire floor of the room. The long bar was the centerpiece of the room. Instead of a long wooden structure against the back wall, it was a square island that was placed in the center.

No one was wearing a uniform; for a person not familiar with the establishment, the only way to discern a decently-clothed servant from a customer was to tap someone on the back and hope they didn’t take offense. But any regular who paid frequent visits even before the Gold Gardens had become the shining jewel of the world for freebooters and scoundrels could tell the attendants apart by the way they held themselves. The people that worked here walked around with a confident flair in their step that few inhabitants shared on Leviathan. Bill knew that the Gardens were a place where no one had to fear an unseen dagger to the throat or a stray pistol shot taking a whole future away in an instant.

Everyone who had spent more than an hour with the owner knew that they would fight a kraken if it meant the people under their care were safe.

Speaking of them, Bill spotted the proprietor as soon as he entered the room. This was not a difficult feat; they drew one’s attention like a siren’s song catches a lonely sailor's ear.

With their back to the bar, Garthy O’Brien was looking out over their establishment with a laid back attitude and eagle-sharp eyes. They were somewhere in their mid-twenties and carried a strange sense of savvy for their young age. Their seaweed-colored hair was reaching close to their shoulders now – last time Bill had seen them they were still trying out that short undercut. Their upper body was only covered by a brightly patterned brocade shawl, partly falling over their chest which was carefully wrapped in perfumed pearl-colored bandages, hiding what Bill knew to be scars of the best kind.

“O’Brien!” Bill shouted at the top of his lungs, drawing their attention. Their gold irises seemed to flash even brighter when they spotted the rugged pirate stomping into the room.

No one knew exactly where the young upstart had come from or how they had obtained such a successful business sense. People had tried to find dirt on them and some had even had the gall to knock on Bill’s bulkhead door for information, though he had and offered none. One day the kid was a nobody, the next they owned a complex of buildings in the most bankable neighborhood of the city and had big plans for them.

Bill had first met the youngster when he was trying to find himself a new fence after his old one was forced to retire due to a tragic incident involving three sharks and a bonesaw. One of his contacts hooked him up with the twenty-year-old kid who had a big interest in and knowledge of magical items, and thus their partnership took off.

“Look who we have here, William Seacaster.”

“The one and only!” Bill grabbed the owner of the Gold Gardens into a tight embrace and gave them a forceful pat on their back. Garthy winced slightly at the pain, but their genuine smile didn’t falter.

“Thank Gruumsh for that,” Garthy groaned after they had been released while rubbing their shoulder, and gestured for Bill to take place on one of the velvet cushioned bar stools close to them. Bill sat down on one with a loud huff of air. “It’s always a delight to see your face again, William.”

“Ha! No one’s ever said that to me before, and I’m married!”

“How is the divine elven beauty anyways? Am I ever going to meet her?” They put on the half-sincere half-business smile they always wore around Bill.

“Not if I want her to remain faithful to me!” Bill slammed his fist on the table, roaring with laughter at his own joke. Garthy gave a polite chuckle and shook their head. “She’s doing well,” he continued when breath had returned to him. “Bugging me ass off, trying to get me to settle down, spend some more time with the kid. She’s too good for me.” His grin became a little more affectionate than he usually showed. “Gods, what did I do to deserve that woman?”

“Is the most feared pirate Spyre has seen in centuries thinking of retiring? That would be quite the news.” They waved over to the barkeep, a stout and handsome dwarf named Cullen, and a second later a tankard filled with strong-smelling rum was pushed into Bill’s hands. Oldest salesman trick in the book: get your client drunk as shit on free drinks to haggle for the best prices. But it took a hardy boozer to drink Bill Seacaster under the table, and he wasn’t planning on letting Garthy off the hook that easily.

“Yeah, well. Ye know how it is.” He took a big swig of his rum, letting the drink spill into his beard. In the years that he’d lived Bill had traveled all over the world but he had yet to find a place that served a better drink than the Gold Gardens.

The drink also gave him an excuse not to elaborate. Hallariel was the light of his life and he would go to the edges of the world to please her, but he wasn’t certain he was ready to abandon the briny depths for good. While Bill was figuring out how to balance his work and life, she and little Fabian were staying on the shore, moving from portside town to town. It had worked fairly well in the beginning, when Fabian was still too young to recognize the face of his father and Hallariel was longing for some self-dependence after her sheltered life in Kei Lumennura. But years had passed and it became increasingly clear that their system was starting to crumble.

Bill scratched his throat and changed the subject. Those thoughts were far too complicated for his liking.

“Enough about ol’ me. I see that chest o’yers is all packed up. Brinley did a good job then?” Brinley was a Solacian ship medic who had once been a member of the Hangman’s crew to earn money for med school. When Garthy had passingly expressed interest in getting top surgery, Bill had recommended the lad to them.

“That man is more of a miracle worker than I am. Solacian technology really is something, isn’t it?” They stretched their arms, letting the silk shawl that was the only thing covering their torso slip over their shoulders and onto the bar. “There were a couple of magical options for me to choose from of course, but all those are treading more on the experimental side, and when it comes to my body I’d rather be safe.”

“I bet ye can’t wait to flounder around all bare-chested and pretty. Make even more people crazy for ye.”

“Temptation _is_ my calling and main source of income, darling,” they said with a shrug, running one hand through their hair.

“Right,” Bill said, rolling his eyes. He liked to think that he was immune to the celestial’s charms, but he had no inclination to test that. “While we’re on the subject of business.” He scraped his throat, considering how to bring this up. “The scuttlebutt has it ye’re gonna close the doors o’ the Gold Gardens?”

If there was one thing the pirates of Leviathan liked besides a good booty, it was juicy gossip. The rumors of the current state of the famous pleasure house were on everyone’s lips, although no one, including Bill, could imagine why Garthy would close their business after it had proved so lucrative.

“Not as long as I draw breath,” Garthy said fiercely. Their pleasant, relaxed expression had vanished and was replaced by a look of steeled resolve. “The Bombardier is telling anyone who doesn’t want to hear it that my establishment is making people soft. That self-indulgent luxuries do not belong on Leviathan.” They smiled wryly at that; if there was one place where people indulged themselves as easily as they breathed, it was Leviathan. “In truth, he’s trying to drive me out to steal what is mine, of course. But he can make all the threats he wants, this place is mine. He’ll have to drag my corpse out of here before I let him take it!”

They said that last part loud enough for the entire barroom to hear. A few drunks in the back cheered and one of the performers gave them an appreciative pat on the back as she walked by. The rest of the establishment cast their eyes down and pretended not to be witnesses to the provocation.

“I should probably install some wards here though, just to be certain,” they continued in a much quieter voice.

Bill grunted in sympathy. The Bombardier, a popular moniker for King Johnas Mitchell, was the current ruler of Leviathan. Bill hadn’t had many dealings with the man, but from what he had heard he was a nasty piece of seagull shit. He’d challenged the previous Pirate King – a man Bill had respected – and against everyone’s expectations the scurvy underdog had come up as the victor. Foul play was suspected, but on an island inhabited by the worst of the worst, foul play was almost always a requirement.

The Bombardier had then greedily soaked up every drop of power like a sea sponge with an agenda, changing whatever aspect of Leviathan he didn’t like to suit his whim. A damned rotter he was, that man.

Bill rattled his throat and spat out a blob of thick saliva on the bar, which was immediately wiped away by Cullen the barman to keep the shiny wood as sparkling as the rest of the tent.

“I think he’s just scared o’ye,” he said as Garthy scoffed in disgust at the lack of manners. “Young upstart with the respect o’the whole city. Ye’re loved while that scupper licker’s feared. Can’t dream of bein’ a good captain when yer crew’s more worried ‘bout not pissing their pants than—” He trailed off when a small commotion a few tables to their left broke out.

The table closest to the door leading further into the inside of the Gardens had seemingly caught fire. A few patrons rose in alarm, but the staff all kept remarkably calm, including Garthy, who glanced meaningfully to an older barmaid. She sighed in irritation and grabbed a bucket filled with sand from behind the bar and dispersed its contents over the small flames.

With the situation obviously under control, patrons returned to their drinks and companions, but Bill’s curiosity had been piqued. Before Garthy could open their mouth to explain, Bill noticed another source of light coming from under the table nearest to the one that had just spontaneously burst into flames. He put down his drink and jumped off his stool to crouch down.

A young girl was hiding under the table, the dark skin of her cheeks getting a pink flush when she didn’t look away quickly enough to avoid eye contact with Bill. Bill almost mistook her for an aarakocra girl, with her birdlike feet and tucked up red-feathered wings, but her features were very human. She had short curly hair that Bill at first thought was simply dyed in very vibrant colors, but when she ducked her head even lower he realized that the strands of her hair were little twirls of deep red and orange flames, flickering with her every movement. 

“It seems like we’ve got ourselves a little eavesdropping interloper.” Bill chuckled and he nodded jovially towards the girl as a greeting.

“Darling, what are you doing under there?” Garthy was now sitting with one knee on the royal carpet, at eye level with the girl. The tone in their voice was gentle and affectionate, and Bill couldn’t help but raise a brow. He had never heard them talk like that, not even to some of the little runner knaves that worked as messengers in the Gardens. They smiled and beckoned for her to sit with them. She wouldn’t move however.

“I sneezed,” she murmured. “My head hit the table.” She was terribly embarrassed, Bill realized. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, that’s alright, lovey,” Garthy assured her with a dismissive wave of their other hand. “I believe that table was made out of cursed wood from the Sternwood, and it always looked horribly out of place. Good riddance, I say.” They reached a hand out for her. “The one you’re hiding under right now, I do like though. So would you join us?”

She visibly had to muster the courage to take their hand and come out of her hiding place, mumbling a few unintelligible apologies. She was very small, shorter than Fabian, although she must have been around the same age as Bill’s boy. As soon as she emerged she hid her hands in the pockets of a red and black frilly dress. She was covering the anxiety sketched on her face behind a curtain of blazing red and orange curls, trying to look anywhere except in Bill’s direction. A shy one, she was.

“William, meet my ward, Ayda Aguefort. Ayda, this is William Seacaster, a friend and business partner of mine.”

“Call me Bill,” he said warmly, grinning from eye to eye. A ward, eh? Garthy O’Brien kept being a person full of surprises.

 _I will under no circumstances call you by anything but your last name_ , her eyes told him while she mustered a polite smile.

“So, lassie, what’s the reason ye was watching us, then?”

“I wanted to talk about my project, but didn’t want to disturb you.”

“I’m sure William won’t mind if we pause our conversation and take a little break,” Garthy said with one eye on Bill, an unspoken question. Bill shrugged in assent, returning to his chair. “So what did you want to tell me?”

“I finished it.” She pushed a piece of paper into the half-orc’s hands, seemingly having decided that the best way to share this ‘project’ of hers was to completely ignore Bill’s presence.

“Let me see that.” They gingerly unfolded the paper and stared blankly at it for a few seconds. Then their smile turned a little brighter as they pulled Ayda into a one-armed hug. “That’s really beautiful, lovey. It’s very detailed.” The compliment was genuine, but Ayda’s shoulders still slumped a little. Bill’s eye flickered over the drawing and he furrowed his brows.

“Can ye give me a look o’that?” Garthy raised an eyebrow but handed the paper over. Bill held it out against the light, taking in the familiar lines and dots drawn in red and blue crayon with a crooked grin. “Well, sink me like an anchor! That’s a perfect star chart!” It was a bit abstract and simplistic in design, but Bill immediately recognized the constellations and their positions. As far as his one eye could see, every star was in the correct place. “We use one o’these on our ship! And ye made this yerself?”

Ayda’s mouth formed a comical little ‘o’, but then turned into a wide smile that showed off a few gaps between her baby teeth. She nodded fervently. She was literally glowing now, her hair flaring brighter as she let out a nervous but happy chuckle. “I did!” she said proudly. “The star charts I found in the library were very old, so I made a new one. This one is better.”

“What about these five stars?” He tapped on a cluster of dots at the top left of the sphere. “That’s not the Red Fox, is it?”

Ayda’s previous hesitation was gone and she climbed up on the stool next to Bill. She took the chart from his hands to spread it out on the bar, her little fingers pointing at the constellation in question. “No, the Red Fox is next to the Lion. This one,” she said, her voice getting excited as she continued talking, “is very hard to see without a spyglass or a telescope. I think people often confuse it with the Spearman, which is why it doesn’t have a name.” She looked up, suddenly nervous again. “Am I boring you?”

“Boring me?” He barked a laugh, which didn’t seem to put Ayda much at ease. “Lass, ye’re fascinating. Tell me, have ye ever considered a career as a pirate? Me and me crew could use a brain like yers.”

“Absolutely not,” Garthy, who had been listening to their conversation with endeared interest, interjected. “William, she is six.”

“That’s right! Ye gotta start young, that’s how the best seadogs are made.” He wiped away some foam from his drink that had gathered in his beard after he took another big swig of rum. Ayda fumbled with the seam of her dress, biting her lip in an obvious attempt to keep herself from laughing. Garthy shook their head, but before they could continue the conversation a soft cough from one of the servant girls stole their attention.

“Mx. O’Brien? Linette needs your help over at the massage parlor.” She leaned in conspiratorially and in a hushed tone that only Garthy and Bill could catch, she continued: “There’s a problem with one of the acupuncturist’s clients. It’s bad.”

Garthy sighed slightly exasperated as they nodded, golden eyes darting between the girl and Bill and Ayda. “I’ll be right there,” they told the servant, and when she had walked away they turned to their friend and ward.

“Ye need any help? This sounds like it’s gonna be hilarious,” Bill offered. Garthy ignored him in favor of pushing a strand of long green hair back behind their ears, a motion betraying their faint irritation at the interruption.

“Lovies, I’m going to take care of this, try not to break anything while I’m gone. I’ll be back in a jiff.” They affectionately ruffled Ayda’s hair and gestured for Cullen to keep refilling Bill’s cup. With one last concerned glance over their shoulder, they left the bar.

Ayda fidgeted with her fingers, looking a little unsure now that she was left behind with a man she didn’t know. Bill Seacaster was not a man who planned on letting uncomfortable silences fall however, and he kicked his boot and peg leg up on the shiny wood of the bar.

“So, have ye ever used that big brain o’yers to write a shanty?” he began, but was cut short when a towering bugbear slammed the door open, cutlass sword in his hand and a whole crowd of pirates behind him, all of whom had their weapons drawn. His bloodshot eyes scanned the bar and narrowed when his gaze landed on the pair at the bar.

“BILL SEACASTER!” the bugbear roared with fury. “Your death comes today!”

The lively buzz of the bar fell quiet and all heads turned around to stare at the newcomers with various levels of distress and disapproval. Bill glanced behind the bugbear and saw that the two bouncers were lying knocked out on the floor with rapiers sticking out of their chests like iron wheat stalks. Garthy was going to be so pissed.

With a growing excitement that probably had something to do with his early-stage drunkenness, Bill rose from his chair. Public vengeful challenges were tragically rare at sea, but in Leviathan they were as common as those bloody insolent seagulls.

“Captain Ironfang!” he bellowed. “Still pissed off ‘bout the time I blew those holes in yer hull?” He cracked his knuckles, his bearded face splitting open in a wide, vicious grin.

Leroy Ironfang was a two-bit pirate captain with a breath that smelled like a dead turtle and a reputation smaller than Bill’s patience. As far as Bill was aware Ironfang didn’t even own a ship at the moment; he’d had to sell her to Leviathan because of his gambling debts and now she was part of the ever-expanding wooden mass that formed the city.

“That too.” He mirrored Bill’s grin, a devilish crescent of sharp teeth. “But this isn’t personal. Bosun Stormchaser’s put a bounty on yer severed head. I intend to collect.”

Next to him he heard Ayda draw in a sharp breath at the mention of that name. It rang familiar but before it could click Bill had to dodge the business end of Ironfang’s sword, leaving behind a long scratch on the polished oak wood of the bar. And just like that, people were calling for blood. The battle was on.

His own trusty cutlass was drawn from his sheath and the next swipe was parried effortlessly. Ironfang was a burly fellow and entrusted his strength to keep himself in the fight, throwing his whole body behind every blow. Easy to dodge but deadly when hit. Ironfang was also surprisingly fast on his feet for a man his size. In the first ten seconds of the fight Bill mostly kept himself on the defense.

The stinking bugbear, however, was as stupid as a white shark’s rear end. He only relied on his muscles. Bill was perhaps not the most intelligent and calculating fighter either, but he knew how to exploit an enemy’s weaknesses.

While Bill struggled to keep Ironfang’s sword at bay from his throat, the dagger he kept in his magically bottomless right pocket found itself buried into the soft flesh of his opponent’s thigh. Ironfang snarled in surprise and took a step back. With a frenzied cry Bill threw himself forward. Their eyes crossed, and Bill recognized the ecstasy he saw all too well. They fought differently, but they both shared the same joyful rush of battle.

A second pirate joined their melee, but Bill quickly took them out with a gunshot to the head. Somewhere behind the bar, Ayda yelped.

Oh gods, was he responsible for the kid right now without Garthy around? He had left the Hangman for Leviathan so he _wouldn’t_ have to worry about a sweet but trying handful of a kid for a few days.

He shoved himself into Ironfang with his right shoulder, forcing his opponent to stumble two steps to the left. Bill moved with him, getting a better view of what was going on behind him.

A member of Ironfang’s crew was standing stock-still behind the bar, two raised hands with a dagger clutched between them frozen in the air. The flaming beacon of Ayda’s hair popped up behind the bar, and Bill craned his neck to see that the girl was weaving magic through her fingers. She created a shimmering purple cloud of dust that hit the woman in the face and the paralyzed pirate abruptly fell to the ground, fast asleep.

Satisfied with the Ayda situation, Bill turned back to Ironfang.

The bugbear, injured by the stab wound, was favoring his right leg. Perhaps the pain had hammered some sense into the man because he wasn’t swiping blindly anymore, parrying strikes as much as dealing them, all through gritted teeth and increasingly greater desperation. When an opponent was losing confidence it was easy to get the upper hand, and after a brutal slash to Ironfang’s right shoulder the fight was as good as finished.

Bill put his sword straight through Ironfang’s exposed throat, splattering blood on his own grimacing face. With a last rattling gurgle the dead pirate dropped to the ground.

Feeling not even a little tired, Bill stepped over the dead body, onto his next victim. A wide-eyed goblin defensively held a long dirk in front of him, trembling in fear as Bill confidently walked towards him.

His stride was stopped short when someone tugged his coat from behind him. Ayda had joined him, her eyes burning with blazing magic.

“Trust me,” she said emphatically. Bill knitted his brows but gave a nod. If little miss Aguefort-O’Brien wanted to have the kill for herself, he certainly wasn’t gonna stop her by standing in her way. Bill had been six when he had made his first kill himself; he saw no reason why not let her have this.

He was already looking around for his next target when Ayda finished her muttered spell.

Instead of incinerating the goblin, the inferno of magic swirled around the two of them, enveloping them in an instant. Bill jerked away – had she attacked him? – but her little fingers grasped the seam of his coat with a surprisingly strong grip for a six-year-old. He had to squeeze his eyes to protect them from the burning brightness, and when he opened them again, they were suddenly standing outside, a vague wisp of sea salt air replacing the perfume of alcohol and lavender of the Gardens. The cool morning air hit the gathered sweat on his brow. Ayda was still at his side, panting for breath. Bill swore under his breath as he recognized the signs of a Dimension Door.

“By Jane Ren’s left toe, why in the blazing hells did ye do that?” he fumed. Ayda, worn out by the relative magnitude of that spell, quickly let go of his arm like he was made of heated metal, taking a few steps back to get out of Bill’s reach.

“We can’t fight in the Gardens!”

“What, just ‘cause O’Brien said we couldn’t break anythin’, we shouldn’t defend ourselves?” He turned around, striding back in the direction of the Gold Gardens. They hadn’t teleported far, and Bill could still make out the faint clash of fighting.

“They’re in trouble! And you were making it worse!” She ran to follow him.

“What?” He paused in his step, causing Ayda to bump into his back. “What kinda trouble yer talkin’ about?”

“I know the king wants to close the Gardens. You killing his people only gives him more reason to do it.”

“Those was the Bombardier’s people?”

“The bosun’s, I think, but she works for him.”

“Bosun Stormchaser,” Bill recalled. “Not Gilly Stormchaser, the ol’captain of the Ardent?”

“Yes.”

That was a problem. Gilly Stormchaser wasn’t an opportunistic and cowardly swab like most of the Bombardier’s people; she was a tactical and hard-hearted buccaneer through and through, having sailed under the black for at least as long as Bill. Unlike Bill, she wasn’t very well-known, although this had been by her own design. While Bill basked in his illicitly-gained fame, Stormchaster kept to the shadows and avoided getting her name mentioned in stories and shanties. If she had been the one to place the bounty on Bill’s head, she had undoubtedly done so with an objective in mind, one Bill wasn’t particularly eager to discover when surrounded by another horde of pirate bounty hunters.

“Well, shite. If what ye’re sayin’ is true, I’m gonna need somewhere to lay low for the day.” His mind was already racing towards a few possible options – Jetsam, the Brig, or maybe he should simply get back on the ship that brought him here and return to his family, as he was in no mood to deal with a bounty on his head – when Ayda interrupted his stream of thought.

“I know a place.”

She unfolded her wings and flew over to a rope that belonged to the rigging system which spanned over all of Leviathan, designed for those who wanted accelerated travel at the expense of the air in one’s lungs and a life free of neck pain. Bill shielded his one eye from the sun with his hands, following the length of the rope all the way up to the Crow’s Keep.

“Follow me,” Ayda said, and she took flight.

* * *

“And remember Ilya, next time a client acts up like that, just shoo them out, and maybe give them an expired gift card or something. We’re trying to stick to the whole no-violence thing here.” Garthy sighed exasperated, feeling way older than they actually were. Running a business on an island where acupuncture needles were considered viable makeshift weaponry was really quite taxing.

They turned left, opening the doors of the barroom where they had left William and Ayda. Hopefully William hadn’t managed to corrupt Ayda too much in the few minutes they’d been gone.

“Alright William, where did we leave—” Their hands fell limb to their sides as they took in the battlefield that their barroom had become. At least seven bodies – dead? Unconscious? – were strewn across the floor, blood seeping into the velvet carpet that was almost the same shade of crimson red. Trixie was currently beating the shit out of the only invader that was still standing with her bare fists, but she abruptly stopped and dropped the poor man to the floor when she noticed their return. Ayda and William were nowhere to be seen.

Already starting to cast a spell locating Ayda’s whereabouts, they sighed a groan. “William, I swear, this will be the last time you set foot in my home.”


	2. The Burning Wind Which Calls Us Home

“This is it, then? A big house o’books?”

“Yes, it – don’t touch that – it is called the Compass Points Library.” She snatched a leather-bound tome away from the dreaded pirate captain and balanced on her tiptoes to put it back on the spot Mister Seacaster had unceremoniously pulled it from.

Now that they had stopped running, Ayda could finally take a deep breath. A familiar musty air that smelled like parchment and salted caramel filled her lungs as she stepped through the ever-open copper doors of the building perched atop the Crow’s Keep. All the tension that had built up in her body instantly melted away like snow in her warm hands. The Compass Points Library was welcoming her home.

“Even if someone saw you go to the Crow’s Keep, they will think you went to the Ramble. This place is safe.”

(Unless it wasn’t. Unless they’d been followed, and Ayda’s sanctuary would overflow with merciless pirates looking for their bounty, in their wake destroying everything Ayda’s past versions had dedicated their lives to building. This man – _a man she didn’t even know_ – was a fugitive from Leviathan’s law and she had brought him here, how could everything not go wrong?)

 _Happy thoughts, lovey_ , Garthy’s voice reminded her. She forced a shaky exhale through her teeth.

“Should’ve gone to the Ramble,” Mister Seacaster murmured in his fist, snapping Ayda out of her train of thought. “Zuhari-Royce and Red Bonny would’ve vouched for me, get this bounty off me back.”

He still sounded ungrateful for her having taken him here, even though she had given him the perfect safehouse to lay low in. Ayda chose to ignore that and shook her head, remembering that the captain hadn’t been to Leviathan for a while. “Most elder pirates of the Ramble were voted out after the king said they were too senile. It’s just a bar now.”

Mister Seacaster scoffed. “A vote, eh? And dare I ask who was involved in this vote?”

“A small council the king created, I think.”

The older pirate indulged himself in a tirade of abusive language, grumbling obscenities that Garthy would have shielded her ears from had they been here. Ayda left him to steam off on his own and headed towards the front desk, where the head librarian, an impossibly old wizard named Rawlins, was sitting and holding up a cage with a colorful parrot inside it, inspecting the bird closely.

“Rawlins, no more eating parrots, remember?” she warned, ducking behind the counter to grab a linen bag with the Compass Points logo painted on it, in which were various books she had yet to read and books she had already read but wanted to go over once again. Rawlins slowly put the cage down with a shameful look.

When she returned to the place where she had left Mister Seacaster, she found it empty. After a minute of frantically looking around, she spotted the green coat of the pirate in question ducking under a rope that had been drawn around a part of the library to mark it as off-limits for the public for safety reasons.

Ayda joined him as he stared over the rubble that was the east section of the Compass Points Library. “There was another raid two weeks ago,” she explained, her throat closing up at the sight. “We’re still cleaning up.”

Well, they had tried cleaning up, but they were very short-staffed at the moment, and Rawlins and Ayda alone were not a great team for heavy construction work. The person-sized hole that had been blasted through the wall was still there, and many bookcases that had been knocked down had been too heavy for the wizards to be set upright again. And without a place for them to rest on, they hadn’t been able to reshelve the collection of books, some of which were centuries old. All of them were now resting in many high-stacked piles on the scorched floor, ordered by how damaged they were.

Without saying anything Mister Seacaster pulled up his sleeves, crossed the distance between him and one of the toppled bookcases and heaved. 

“And ye’ve got no ways of makin’ sure this don’t happen again?”

“Well, we’re trying out a membership card system now. I made them!” She pulled a piece of paper that previously functioned as a bookmark out from between the pages of a book in her bag and showed it to him once he had lifted the bookcase back into its standing position. It was one of her best drawings, a little compass rose inside a circle with blue, yellow, red, purple, and black stripes. She had also drawn a book with a happy face on it just so people would know that the Compass Points was a library and not a compass shop. That mistake had been made many times.

“Cute. Has it helped?”

“... No.”

Postponing the work of putting all the books back to their resting places for now, Ayda led Mister Seacaster to the spiraling staircase that took them to the second floor, the observatory. The domed observatory was an academic place where astrologists and navigators alike conferred. This was where Ayda spent most of her time, either reading the books she got from the library or staring at the sky through the lens of the massive telescope that had stood on a platform for almost a century. The only person in the observatory at the moment was a bearded half-elf, hunched over several star charts, planispheres, and other navigation tools. His scarred eye opened wide when he recognized Ayda’s companion, and he quickly scurried out of the room, leaving Mister Seacaster and Ayda alone.

“Not too shabby,” Mister Seacaster nodded, craning his head to see the ceiling of the dome, painted a dark-blue color, not unlike that of a stormy ocean. “Heard o’this place, though I’ve ne’er been here meself. Ye come here a lot?”

“It’s mine,” she replied, not without pride.

The usual reaction anyone had when they learned that the crown jewel of Crow’s Keep was owned and managed by a child who hadn’t lost most of her baby teeth yet was wide-eyed surprise and poorly-veiled disbelief. The captain’s abrupt barking laughter proved once again that he was one of the most unusual people she had ever met. “Well done, lass! Did ye steal it from that all mighty wizard they said used to dwell here?”

“No,” she said, taking place at one of the long mahogany study tables. It took her a few seconds before she realized that Mister Seacaster’s silence meant that he was waiting for further explanation.

Her body tensed up in hesitation. Did she even have an explanation? She had never had to tell anyone since the people she interacted with on a daily basis either already knew or were not interested in her personal history enough to care to ask. How could she accurately relay the cycle that was her life without a frame of reference?

Was she even supposed to tell him? Garthy hadn’t told her she shouldn’t, and Mister Seacaster was a partner of them, so that probably meant they trusted him.

“Garthy told me that my mama is a phoenix.” Garthy had been the one to tell her about her parentage because she hadn’t yet been able to read her own notes three years ago, when she started asking questions about how the world worked. According to Garthy, she had started doing that ever since she knew how to talk. “Like her, I come back when I die. But new, every time.”

“Ah, I see. Immortality. The most sought-after curse of ‘em all.” The buccaneer nodded sagely.

“It is stupid to want it.”

Mister Seacaster chuckled. “That it is, lass. Meself, I’ve got big plans for when I’m done for and I get to walk through the gates o’hell. Ye want an orange?” The abrupt shift in topic made Ayda look up in surprise, thinking the offer was some kind of metaphor she was not aware of. But he reached into one of the pockets of his battered coat which was apparently deeper than it seemed, because he indeed pulled two whole oranges out of it, slightly overripe but otherwise as good as one was going to get on an island where the only living trees were extremely cursed.

A cathartic quote written by Tew Roberts, author of _The Chaos of Crews_ , echoed in her mind and she found herself with a sudden lump in her throat. Without waiting for a reply, Mister Seacaster tossed the orange on her lap. She didn’t even attempt to catch it, staring at the fruit with an inexplicable heavy heart.

“Hey, lass? Why the tears?” Mister Seacaster, already half done with peeling his orange, was looking at her with concern. Bewildered, Ayda brought her fingers to her cheek and with a shock she confirmed that they came back wet with little droplets of liquid fire. Stupid, _stupid_ , stupid. She always cried so quickly, for the stupidest of reasons. Mister Seacaster was only being considerate, and she was immediately overreacting.

“This orange made me sad,” she answered truthfully.

One of Mister Seacaster’s eyebrows jumped up to his hairline. “And how did that devil of a deformed apple make ye sad?”

“I… I have a book. It is my only book about friendship. It’s… not about friendship, actually, but about crews.” She opened the bag and showed him the plain cover of Tew Robert’s acclaimed debut. It was also the only book the writer had ever produced, because soon after its publishing the man had been forced to walk the plank after a mutiny. The irony of that wasn’t lost on her. “The writer said that sailors give their friends oranges so the people they care about don’t get scurvy.”

“Oh, so that’s why Cathy the Black always forces me to eat ‘em. Thought she just really likes ‘em herself.” He popped an orange slice in his mouth and chewed on it while looking at her and scratching his bearded chin. “Ye don’t have many friends, then?”

“Books are my friends,” she said defensively, clutching _The Chaos of Crews_ a little tighter to her chest.

“BALDERDASH!” he yelled loudly and rather abruptly, causing Ayda to flinch back. “Books are not yer friends, friends are yer friends!”

“Making friends is hard. Most people don’t understand me,” she murmured. She didn’t understand herself either a lot of the time, but that was too complicated a thought to convey. “I don’t think they like being around me.”

“Got that in common, lass. If I’d had a silver every time I heard some scabby scallywag say me presence was disturbin’ ‘em, well, I’d be as rich as one o’those pretentious bank-dwelling merchant landlubbers.” Ayda could not completely disagree with that sentiment. “But that’s not to say I don’t got meself friends.” He scratched his chin. “The thing about friends is that it takes effort to make ‘em. Friends don’t just appear outta nowhere, lassie. I’m not sayin’ that to make ye feel worse, just speakin’ true. Me first friend tried to kill me three times when we first met, and now I trust her with the care of me son!” He chuckled to himself. “Y’know what she said to me one night? ‘Friendship may at first seem humble, but beyond its drab exterior lies a golden treasure greater than any ship's bounty.’ Smart woman, she is. Always knew just what to say. Tryin’ to lure me in with the prospect o’gold.”

“Was it true?”

“Aye, it was true,” he admitted. “She and that husband and kids o’hers was me first real family.”

“That must be nice.”

“It was.” His smile faded a little at that, and apparently Rawlins had decided that was a good moment to bring Ayda a cup of hot cocoa and the visitor a steaming hot glass of tea. Mister Seacaster accepted the drink but instead of taking it he started ticking his spoon against the porcelain to the beat of _Fifteen Men on a Deadmen’s Chest_.

The silence that hung between them was an ember in the ocean, doused shortly after it had ignited. While peeling and eating her gifted orange, Ayda was repeating the conversation she had just miraculously managed to have with this adult in her head, involuntarily analyzing whether she had said anything wrong. It was a thing her brain automatically did and usually resulted in her feeling terrible, but this time her thoughts got stuck on one particular thing Mister Seacaster had mentioned. She hesitated to bring it up, because it could either be the start of another productive conversation or a subject that would be immediately shut down and made the awkwardness level between them skyrocket.

“You said you have a son?”

To her immense relief, Mister Seacaster wasn’t offended by the personal question. “I do, little yapper about yer age. I’d say something sappy like that he reminds me of ye, but that is most certainly not true.”

“But you’re Bill Seacaster.” The name Seacaster was a name that implied many things, most of all a greatness that seemed impossible to achieve. To carry such a name without having done any of those deeds… She suddenly felt a strangely familiar little pang of pity for Mister Seacaster’s son.

“And? Can’t Bill Seacaster find a little happiness of his own?”

Ayda bit her lip. Most conversations were a twirling and complicated waltz to which Ayda didn’t know all the steps. She always was afraid to accidentally kick somebody’s heel or step on their toes, after which they’d get mad and leave her alone in the middle of the dancefloor. Talking to Mister Seacaster was like that, but this time she was also blindfolded. “But what about your son?”

Mister Seacaster groaned. “Now ye’re startin’ to remind me of me wife. Cathy the Black too, when she’s pickin’ sides.”

“I just think it’s not that hard for a father to be with his child,” Ayda murmured, surprising herself with her unexpectedly bitter tone. For Mister Seacaster to be traveling the world while he had a child out there who was waiting for his father to return from his adventures… the thought of it was like ash in her mouth.

She remembered a particular notebook she had once found tucked away in a drawer. It had been separated from her collection of notes written by the other versions of Ayda Aguefort, and unlike the rest it didn’t have any notes about arcane studies or science or astrology or the layout of the Compass Points. It was an old journal, describing daily events of the mistress of the Compass Points Library in a formal and detached way. But hidden between pages of uneventful logs there were scribbled passages about a mage from the mainland named Arthur Aguefort, sometimes scorched by what Ayda imagined were tears of fire.

The hand-written words talked about a hurt that Ayda did not fully understand. The person that was her but also not had written about growing up alone and striving and reaching and _achieving_ even though no paternal praise was coming. It was almost scary how easily those feelings of a stranger resonated within her, like she had been empty on the inside all her life.

Arthur Aguefort was someone she hoped she would never meet, even though it was her greatest wish.

As if her thoughts were flaming letters all carved onto her forehead, Mister Seacaster, eager to change the topic himself, clicked his tongue and addressed what some people considered to be the elephant in the room, although to Ayda it was more of an ever-buzzing wasp nest. “O’Brien said yer name’s Aguefort, right? Like the Solacian wizard?”

Ayda hummed something non-committal, not liking the direction this conversation had taken. By fixating on the pages of _The Chaos of Crews_ that she rapidly flipped against the nail of her thumb she avoided meeting his gaze, suddenly missing the long-stretched silence that in hindsight hadn’t been so bad. Mister Seacaster didn’t notice how glaringly closed-off she had become, settling back in his chair as he kept talking.

“Knew that name sounded familiar. He’s yer gramps or something?” Without waiting for an answer (not that Ayda would have given one) he continued. “I met him a while ago. Crazy as a marooned shellback of course, but he’s got himself a pretty formidable record. Heard he’s helmin’ a school of all things nowadays. Teachin’ younglings ‘bout stuff. Kinda like what ye’re doin’ with the library and all, eh? Funny how—”

“I don’t _care_ what he’s doing!” Ayda yelled. Her outburst came as quite a surprise to Mister Seacaster and an even bigger one to herself. She put her hand over her mouth, an apology already on her lips. But the words refused to come and instead of apologizing she hastily shoved her chair back and flew away from the pirate to the observation platform on which the telescope was stationed.

With her back to the study tables where Mister Seacaster was still sitting in stunned silence, Ayda looked up at the ceiling. The dark blue really looked like a dark sky, just moments after the sun had fully set beyond the endless horizon. She calmed herself down by imagining how it would look like with constellations painted on them.

Then with the forceful impact of a meteor the realization that she had yelled at an adult hit her. And not just any adult, _the greatest pirate who ever lived_. There were so many wild tales about Bill Seacaster that Ayda did not know what to believe, but if even half of them were true this man would cook and eat her alive without a sliver of remorse. And she had made him mad.

But _she_ was also mad. Those feelings were undeniably there, twisting in her chest, clawing and thrashing around. She so rarely got angry that it was almost hard to identify.

She sank to the floor with her back pressed against the metal structure, her knees buckling under the weight of her own emotions. She wasn’t mad _at_ Mister Seacaster. He had made her uncomfortable but she had also not made it very clear that she did not want to talk about her father. Thus, it was partly her own fault. With this knowledge in mind, were her own feelings on the matter a valid enough standpoint against the fact that she had snapped at and possibly angered a grownup?

With her mind busy trying to pinpoint the justifications behind her outburst, she hadn’t even noticed that the outburst’s target had joined her on the platform. The meaning behind his body language was hard to pin down. But he wasn’t red-faced and screaming, which probably meant he wasn’t very angry.

“I no longer want to talk to you,” she murmured, turning away from him. She wasn’t finished thinking yet, and he would just confuse her further if he didn’t stop talking.

“What be me mistake?” he asked, a little indignant, rubbing the back of his neck.

Part of Ayda didn’t want to answer, clinging to the logic that if a man as experienced as Bill Seacaster didn’t understand her problem, she was never going to change his views with her answer.

But the thing was that people never stopped changing. It had been an honest question and despite her feelings Ayda felt an obligation to educate. The Compass Points was a place for learning, whether that was learning from books or learning how to grow. Ayda was just not a very great teacher.

“You think Arthur Aguefort is so great and powerful, but I hate him,” she said, and it stung how flawed that word was. _Hate_. It was too big but also too little. “He left me alone on this island because he cared more about his work than me, and you are doing the same thing with your son.” The tears returned, and she was furiously wiping them away, ashamed that Mister Seacaster was seeing her like this. She hid her face behind her short strands of hair.

The pirate made no remark on her tears. He sat down next to her, crossing his legs. The air of exuberant joviality that always seemed to surround him was gone, replaced by something almost contemplative. “Girlie, I’m sorry for upsettin’ ye. I didn’t know about yer old man. There’s no man as vile as one who hurts those dear to him. If ye ever need me to kill him, it’d be a grand quest I’d gladly accept.” Quickly, he added: “For the right price, of course.”

Ayda couldn’t suppress a chuckle at that, but concealed it by quickly giving a wry snort pressed into the skin of her arms. She was mad, so no laughing at jokes.

(It had probably been a joke. Right?)

“As for that second part… Hm.” He grunted as he shifted his position, considering his words. “I’m not leavin’ him alone, I love the little rapscallion.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Y’see, t’was a gem that brought me here…” He paused, his shoulders sagging as he listened to his own words. “No, shiver me timbers and devils be damned, ye’re right. I’m avoidin’ ‘em.” He made a frustrated sound and forcefully slammed the back of his head against the base of the metal telescope, which was a concerning thing to do, but the pirate did not seem perturbed by the pain at all. Maybe it helped him think better, like how Ayda often fumbled with her quill or practiced her cantrips while she was reading or concentrating.

“I know it’s not gonna be any consolation, but I want ye to know that I’ve got no clue how to be a father meself. Mine was terrible. I killed him when I was about yer age.”

“Oh.” What could she possibly say to that? “I’m sorry.”

“Eh, the man was a bastard and I’ll happily–” He abruptly fell silent, cocking his head with a frown. “Did ye hear that?”

Ayda had heard it too. Footsteps and voices, coming from the library area downstairs. “People,” she confirmed nervously. “Many of them.” The rate of illiteracy in Leviathan was too high for the Compass Points to ever be crowded. Large groups rarely entered the library. Nothing good had ever come out of it when they did.

Mister Seacaster left the platform and with great strides headed towards the spiral staircase. Ayda watched him walk away, still sitting on her knees with her back to the telescope, before she jumped up and followed on his heels. When Mister Seacaster reached the lower stairs where they would be visible from the ground floor, he held out his hand to signal that she should wait out of sight a few steps above him. Not able to see the library herself, she focused on the pirates’ body language as he cast a glance around. The older man was tense, then after a second that seemed to stretch on forever he pulled back, quickly hurrying back up the stairs, gesturing for Ayda to move.

“Hide,” Mister Seacaster urged, grabbing her by her wrist and pulling her back, away from the stairs, but not before Ayda got one glance at the approaching figures that were scouring the first floor. It was a mob of bounty-hunting buccaneers. The half-elf that had been in the observatory before was helming the group and he and many others were holding torches. 

“They’re going to burn the books,” she whispered in horror. Her heartbeat was an aching pounding in her ears.

“Then we’ll have to give ‘em something else to destroy first,” Mister Seacaster growled. He turned to one of the massive oak bookcases containing maps of the Celestine Sea standing next to the stairwell and before Ayda could protest, he pushed, his face straining red and the veins in his neck popping out. The piece of furniture gave way and toppled over the railing, crashing down on the stairway, sliding a few steps down before it got stuck in the narrow passageway, blocking the way for the intruders. Ayda flinched at the loud sound of splintering wood but didn’t so much as squeak in protest.

“That’ll keep ‘em busy.” He rubbed his hands and turned around, making his way to the platform once again. Ayda grabbed the corner of his coat once more, tugging in an attempt to slow him down. Instead of stopping, he grabbed her hand.

“But the library! They’re going to destroy it!” Mister Seacaster didn’t listen to her and continued his path forward, dragging Ayda further along with him, even though there was no exit in that direction. For a second in which she felt that intimate fear of upsetting people, she let him. But her library, her second _home_ , was in danger. Mister Seacaster didn’t understand that; he couldn’t. “No, no, let go of me!” She wrestled herself free, slipping out of Mister Seacaster’s grasp. Falling to her knees, she pressed the palms of her hands against her ears until the bandits’ taunting calls were muted enough that she couldn’t hear their threatening words. She hoped that it would create some sort of calm inside her head, but instead a nagging voice spoke up, the one that sounded so much like Ayda’s own but older and brisker, telling her that by pretending the problem was gone she hadn't actually solved anything, and that she was only making things worse. She tried to drown that voice out as well.

The calm she was looking for, in which she could make levelheaded decisions, didn’t come. Instead an overbearing overload of awareness crashed down on her. The emotions that had dislodged themselves in her chest still hadn’t fully dissolved and she was painfully aware of how heavy her entire body felt. Her own skin seemed to fit wrong. Every twitch of her fingers hurt.

Everything was a familiar kind of too loud.

Through all those overwhelming sensations she could vaguely make out the things she knew to be of importance. Mister Seacaster’s voice, impatient but not unkind. Another voice, one that was almost as familiar as the soothing accent of Garthy’s voice but older and fainter. She couldn’t hear their words; her own inner voice that was screaming for _quiet_ was louder. Even still the presence of those two should have comforted her, should have pulled her back, but stacked on top of the challenging insults and harsh laughter and the maybe imaginary sounds of books being thrown on the ground and the bloodcurdling thought that the entire library was going to be set aflame _and it all would have been Ayda’s own fault_ , it was too much.

It was too much.

She crouched down, folding in on herself.


	3. Derry Down, Down, Down Derry Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from an old shanty called 'the Dreadnaught'. My favorite version is sung by David Coffin (link at the end). The shanty in this chapter is an adapted version from this song.

Shit _shit_ shit _shit_ shit.

Bill had been in many dangerous situations that he had barely gotten himself out of. Usually his foolproof solution was shooting at the problem with his flintlock and stabbing it repeatedly until it died. None of those situations had ever prepared him for an encounter that _could_ theoretically be shot and stabbed, were it not for a paralyzed six year old unresponsively hunkered down on the floor. She was open and vulnerable out here, and Bill couldn’t in good conscience leave her alone while he tended to the bounty hunting crowd that was getting closer every second. The possibility that a stray bullet would hit her was too great.

“Mistress Aguefort?” The old librarian wizard Ayda had referred to as Rawlins appeared in a flash a few feet away from them, having teleported from the ground floor up to the observation platform, his wrinkles taut with worry. Bill quickly pulled him behind the telescope, gesturing at Ayda. His anxious expression softened. “Ah.”

“What do I do?” he hissed through his teeth at a low volume, sensing that making loud noises wasn’t going to help getting Ayda out of her current state. Bill was at a loss of things to do. Fabian never acted like this. Whenever that precious boy got upset he pouted and screamed until either Bill or Hallariel caved in and told Cathilda to give the kid whatever he desired. Ayda had just shut off. It was like she wasn’t completely here anymore.

Rawlins crouched down, putting his hand on Ayda’s shoulder as a comforting gesture. “This has happened before, when the library was very crowded,” he said to Bill. “Calm her down, make her feel safe.”

“Those basterds are comin’ up right now, and we’re not exactly safe here!”

“Then I shall give you time.” He rose from his crouched position, tapping his bony fingers on the cover of his leather-bound book. “Take care of the mistress, young man.”

Before Bill could comment that one misfired bullet could take this frail wizard out instantly, Rawlins cast a spell and suddenly Bill was looking back at his own unkempt visage. Disguised as their target, Rawlins came down the stairs and tipped his head towards the bandit mob, greeting the men with a politeness that Bill had never heard come out of his own mouth.

“Oh, well hello there, gentlemen. How can I help you?” The response was the clattering of swords drawn out of their sheaths. Rawlins as Bill looked unfazed. He glanced up at the real Bill and Ayda one more time and gave them a barely visible nod. Then he dug his heels into the ground and started sprinting out of the observatory, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake. Within a second, Rawlins had raced out of the observatory, completely bypassing the invaders with his nigh-impossible speed.

“That old man is the fastest runner I’ve ever laid me eye on,” Bill whispered in amazement, watching the horde of pirates restore themselves and give chase. Not wasting a second, he crouched over Ayda, not touching her but lowering his gruff voice into a soothing hush. “Hey, lass, they’re gone. Ye can breathe easy, if ye want.”

It took her a few minutes, precious time that they didn’t have. Bill was half of a mind to just lift her up on his back and carry her out of there, but she looked so fragile it didn’t seem like a good idea, not until she stopped flinching every time Bill came a little too close.

Eventually Ayda stopped shivering and the tight grip on her own arms loosened. She stared at Bill with an empty look in her eyes, as if she didn’t remember how she got here. Then the pieces fell into place and she shot up in a sitting position, a panicked expression returning to her face. “The books!” 

“I think they’re fine,” Bill shushed. “They’re chasing yer pal the wizard now.”

“He is very fast,” Ayda murmured, relaxing slightly. “So they’re gone. Okay. That is good, then.” She focused on her breathing for a moment and flapped her hands in front of her chest like a baby bird trying to take flight. The movement calmed her down and after she swallowed a few times, she was able to make clear eye contact with Bill, luminous tears still staining her cheeks and the collar of her dress. Bill thought of Fabian, how he cried after he had hurt himself by playing a little too rough, and he almost reached out to wipe the tear stains off Ayda’s face.

“That happens a lot?” he asked instead as she rubbed her eyes, feeling like a weight had been lifted from him.

“Only when things get bad,” she whispered with a voice so thin it was almost brittle.

“Well,” he said, offering her a hand to pull her to her feet, “we’re gettin’ outta this place, no offense to yer lives’ work.” Not letting go of her before he confirmed she was standing steadily, he gestured to the library. “Layin’ low didn’t work out as we hoped, so we’re takin’ the backwater alleys to the Gardens. I’ll deposit ye with O’Brien and hope they won’t try and kill me too, and then me visit to this hellhole is done.”

“You’re going to leave Leviathan?”

“Aye.” She stopped wiping the dust off her dress and stared at him with a heartbroken expression that had Bill taken aback. “This whole place is out to get me!” he said defensively. “Whaddaya want me to do, storm the Helm and kill every picaroon in me way?”

“He’s hunting you!’

Bill dismissively waved her worry away with his hooked hand. “That bounty’s not a permanent thing. In a few weeks the ol’ Bomber’ll realize he needs me for something and beg his forgiveness. Besides, I don’t get involved in politics if I don’t get paid for it.” He huffed through his nose when Ayda didn’t stop pouting at the ground like a dejected pup, her hair sinking in front of her downcast dark eyes. Fabian often liked to pull the sad-and-cute kid card as well, and it worked more times than not. Bill couldn’t afford giving in this time though, because he wanted to get his ass off this island as soon as possible.

Signaling that they were going to head out, Bill grabbed her bag of books from the floor, which was heavier than it looked, and handed it over to her. Instead of accepting it she jerked away from him, crossing her arms. Bill sighed, slightly irritated, and shook his head. “If ye wanna make yer own way to the Gardens, fine by me. Saves me the detour.”

Without wasting another word he turned around, taking the stairs down to the main floor of the Compass Points and leaving Ayda on her own in the observatory. He glanced around, taking in the damage the pirates had wrought when they had come here to search for him. It hadn’t been severe. A few books were pulled off the shelves in what was probably an act of boredom, but the raiders hadn’t defaced anything.

Just when he stepped through the immense metal doors and felt the watery sunlight falling on his skin, a set of footfalls scurried up behind him. Without saying anything, Ayda came up next to him, her bag slung over her shoulder. The pout hadn’t left her lips but she followed Bill willingly enough.

They walked the rest of the way back towards the Gardens in silence, both keeping an eye out for any pedestrians that showed a little too much interest in the pair. Every now and then the frown on Ayda’s face deepened and she spoke up with a low-pitched "but-", after which there would presumably follow a well-founded reason arguing why Bill couldn't leave, but every time the pirate cut her off with a grumpy "no”. By the time the gondola elevator brought them down to Galleyard she had seemed to have given up on convincing him.

The sun hung in the sky at about a 40 degree angle, by which Bill estimated it was getting close to three o’clock. As usual there was a lot of folk out on the streets of lively Galleyard, although Bill and Ayda mainly kept to the back alleys along which only residents of the neighborhood passed through, heading towards the busier downtown center to do their daily shopping. A group of students with an unmistakably crisp Poop City accent walked by, passionately discussing the pros and cons of Maelstrom's Maw. They fell quiet when Bill stared them down. When the young boys and girls failed to meet his intimidating gaze and quickly hurried past him, Bill snorted, unable to help feeling a speck of disappointment directed at Leviathan’s younger generation.

These days true, seasoned pirates were found less and less roaming the hip center of the Leviathan, unlike in Bill's day. Bill doubted that the majority of Galleyard’s residents had ever even seen an old fashioned man-’o-war sailing out on the open ocean. Profitable globalization brought the kind of inevitable change that would one day mean the end of piracy; the bountiful had no reason to perpetuate the family tradition of piracy and settled down in the well-to-do neighborhoods while the sea-hardened traditional workers could find little space except in the cheap shacks arbitrary positioned in Four Castles, Cannon Court or the Bilge.

The highest tower of the Gardens campus was already looming up in the distance when they suddenly stopped dead in their step.

At the end of the alleyway they had just walked into, a handful of mercenaries were gathered, all heavily armed and, although not on high alert, the familiar trace of hunger for a fight was noticeable in the way they held themselves. Bill didn’t recognize which crew they belonged to at first sight, but it mattered little. He had to assume all mercenaries on this island had caught wind of the hunt for him.

They had only a few seconds to decide what to do. The prudent thing was to turn around and take another route before they were spotted, but Bill was itching for a fight. Fleeing from the Gardens hadn’t been his decision and the distraction in the Compass Points had been necessary to keep Ayda safe. But this time Ayda was perfectly fine and could easily get herself to safety while he finished off this small group.

Hesitation was what made the decision for him, as a red-faced halfling called out: “It’s Seacaster!”, pointing at the pair as if he couldn’t believe his find himself. Bill counted seven pirates all turning towards them, although there might have been more around the corner. He could feel Ayda startle and she tugged his coat in an obvious suggestion to run, but Bill had no such thing in mind.

“Alright, ye found me,” he smirked, his hand casually resting on his sheathed cutlass. “Now, are ye ready to face me as well?”

There was a moment of hesitation within the group that utterly delighted the nostalgic part of Bill that kept holding onto his past exploits. But as all pirates should, the prospect of a hefty golden reward outweighed any pre-battle nerves.

They engaged, and Bill cackled.

Sometimes when faced with the five-foot-six that was the legendary Bill Seacaster people would choose to forget about his reputation and underestimate him. But every part of his reputation had been earned through bloodshed and hardship. He wasn’t the youngest or most intimidating fellow, but he was a fighter. 

And he was absolutely crazy.

Like a predator torn from the depths of the Nine Hells and thrust amidst an equally bloodthirsty but ultimately harmless flock, he gored everyone that dared come close or else chased them out of reach. Gunshots sounded like a continuous thunder to the point that Bill couldn’t discern the difference between a bang of his own flintlock or one of his enemies’. It did not matter. A school of fish, no matter how large their numbers, would never be a match for a shark.

The initial seven pirates quickly fell upon Bill’s blade, but their ranks were pomptly filled by more mercenaries that must have been standing near and had caught wind of the exchange of swords. Keeping count was an impossible task but the old captain understood that he was becoming less and less of a match against the rapidly growing numbers. Yet he gritted his teeth and fought on, incapable of doing anything else.

While the song of gunshots and steel slashing through flesh rang louder than church bells, Bill started noticing that part of the group had started to fall back, assembling at the exits of the alleyway or climbing onto the residential rooftops.

“What’s this then, ye cowardly bunglers?!” he taunted at the top of his lungs. “Already surrenderin’?”

A few pirates stayed engaged in the fight, but their attention seemed elsewhere. The cacophony of battle died down when more and more buccaneers retreated from the action. Bill put his sword back in his sheath and fired two more shots that both flew wide before the battleground had become so quiet that he could pick up a low, gleeful chuckle.

Bill spun around, gun still smoking in his hand, but his finger froze on the trigger when he saw who was standing in front of him.

A struggling Ayda was being kept prisoner in the firm grip of James Whitclaw, first mate of the Crimson Claw and a long-time annoyance shaped like a walking calamari dressed in a red doublet. His tentacles trembled with laughter when Whitclaw recognized the shock in Bill’s eyes.

His stomach sank like it was made out of lead. He’d seen the streaks of fire and magic incapacitating some of his opponents, but hadn’t given much thought to the fact that Ayda hadn’t turned to run. He’d lost track of the girl during the battle, and his carelessness had cost the both of them.

“Whitclaw.” He forced the name through his rotten teeth. He and Whitclaw had crossed paths many times before and although both of them had managed to hold back from shedding the other’s blood through what must be divine intervention, neither party had ever left a room the other was in without wishing the other captain a gruesome death.

Ayda was standing as still as a wooden figurehead, her wide eyes darting between Bill and the tentacles dangling in front of her face. Her shoulders shook as her breaths became quick and panicked. Bill ignored the illithid and pierced his gaze into Ayda’s, hoping he could give her something to focus on and keep the panic at bay.

“They said you’ve gone soft, _Seacaster_ ,” Whitclaw sneered. “It seems like they was right.” His slimy face tentacles wrapped almost teasingly around the back of the poor girl’s head, threatening to do what mindflayers did best if Bill wasn’t going to play nice. Bill had no misgivings that Whitclaw wouldn’t waver before killing a child in cold blood. Maybe Bill would have done the same once upon a time, before his own flesh and blood had come into this world kicking and screaming, a new soul born from a soulless man.

“Doing the Bombardier’s chores now, James? For all yer talk of independence and power ye sure do love playin’ lackey.”

Whitclaw merely shrugged one shoulder, not impressed by Bill’s words. “Sometimes goals align, and who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

Ayda’s trembling fingers twitched and steadied and for a moment it seemed like she was praying, mouthing whispered words. Bill immediately recognized what she was doing.

“Any idea what little old me did to get on the high ‘n mighty Bomber’s bad side, ye reekin’ piece of cuttle?” he said quickly, before the other captain would notice that his captive had stopped struggling.

“You get on people’s bad side simply by setting foot in this city, Seacaster.”

“Is that so?” he said, plucking at his shirt in an infuriating display of utter disinterest while his eye was flickering from Ayda to Whitclaw to the alley’s blocked exits. “How much he offerin’ anyway? What’s the best pirate this world’s ever seen worth these days?”

“Enough to make me rich. Now shut up and drop your weapons,” Whitclaw barked. Bill cocked his head in careful mock-consideration.

“‘N why would I do that?” 

“Even if this girl’s life matters not to you, you’re outnumbered twenty-five to one, Seacaster. This is where you choose to be brought in alive, or _dead_.” Multiple guns were cocked from all around him, probably pointing straight at Bill’s heart. Bill but didn’t look away from Whitclaw, who was practically preening. “And believe me: dead suits me just fine.”

“I think ye meant twenty-five to _two_.” Bill grinned, just as Ayda finished what she had been doing.

Too focused on his adversary, Whitclaw hadn’t noticed that while Bill had been talking Ayda had subtly been muttering the incantations of a spell, barely moving her hands for the somatics. A small speck of orange light appeared between her fingers and streaked to the ground with the speed of lightning. The effect was instantaneous and caught all the pirates unaware. The ground rumbled as a ball of fire exploded with an ear-splitting _boom_.

A startled scream escaped Bill as he ducked away, feeling the flaring heat scorch his face. When he had seen Ayda casting he assumed she was weaving up an offensive spell that purely targeted her grappler, not this blazing inferno that set everything in a twenty-foot radius alight! Everything, including Ayda herself.

His heart seemed to stop beating as he squeezed his eyes, searching through the dissipating smoke for the little girl, afraid to find only a pile of ashes.

In the middle of the sea of flames, Ayda stood, wings fully spread out and free from her captor’s grasp. She was unharmed from stem to stern.

…Right. Someone whose hair was made of fire was probably not gonna be too hurt by it.

Snarling, Whitclaw staggered backward. He had taken the full brunt of the blast and it had fucked him up badly. This was the perfect chance for Bill to throw himself onto the mollusk captain and pierce his sword through that squid’s heart. His boot and prosthetic leg were already in motion when Ayda’s soft gasp for breath rang through the burning air.

Sparks were fluttering through the air around her like stray fireflies, enlightening her visage with an orange glow. Small as she was, she had the fierceness of a ramming fireship, and for the first time Bill could understand that multiple lifetimes had been stored inside the form of such a little girl.

But that incredible display of arcane power wasn’t an everlasting feat and remembering how her previous stressful encounter had gone that day, Bill was already changing directions even before Ayda looked up at him with her big eyes, still in shock at what had almost happened. The magic was weeping from her trembling hands and she clutched them protectively to her chest as her wings folded inwards again.

Bill ran past Whitclaw and grabbed the girl in what overly sentimental people might call a comforting hug but what was strictly a slightly extended grip before he lifted her up and blindly started sprinting towards Four Castles, a dusty neighborhood where the tall buildings made of rotting shipwrecks shed long shadows and the streets were narrow and unlit.

Behind them a furious Whitclaw started yelling orders to his underlings. A troop of four pirates gave chase while the rest needed a minute to recover from the fireball that had injured many of them.

Usually he would make quick work of his four pursuers, but this time he prioritized the trembling girl in his arms over a violent confrontation. Bill scrambled out of Galleyard, slowed down by the strain of his sustained injuries that hadn’t fully registered during the enrapturing rush of the fight.

He had a few contacts in Four Castles who probably wouldn’t turn him in. Well, they probably wouldn't turn him in if they hadn’t heard of the size of the bounty. If they had… that was a problem for another time, one most likely to be resolved with more blood.

A bullet hit the ground beneath Bill’s feet, less than a thumb’s length away from his shoe. The vanguard was closing in on them, aiming for his legs in an attempt to slow him down. They were young lads in excellent form while Bill was only a few summers away from forty and had multiple flesh wounds that were still open and bleeding. He fumbled to get his flintlock out of its holster but couldn’t do so without adjusting his pace or risking dropping Ayda.

With nowhere to go, and the distance between them and the Gardens quickly growing, there was little chance for an escape. Bill knew he was going to have to make a stand sooner or later.

He settled for sooner. Digging his heels into the ground he skidded to a stop, surprising the pursuers with his change of direction. Ayda made a panicked noise which was muffled on account of her face being buried into the cotton lining of Bill’s coat. He took a deep breath, shielding Ayda with his own body as much as he could.

However, before he could pull his gun, a rumbling sound shook the streets like distant thunder. Bill had a second to duck out of the way before without any sign or warning, a true colossus came out of nowhere, moving past Bill and forcefully slamming against one of the pirates. The man screamed in terror and pain as he was violently crushed between a wall and the massive body of the unexpected newcomer.

Bill’s gun was numb in his hands as he watched the giant thing step away from the squashed man and focused its attention on the other pirate, who was suddenly looking a whole lot smaller.

Ayda struggled in his grasp in order to face the thing and, hoping that their pursuers had bigger problems than catching the duo, Bill loosened his grip on her so she wouldn't accidentally squirm out of his arms.

It was standing under the shadow, scraping the bloodied form of the now dead man off its chest. For the split second in which Bill was unsure of their fates, he could only see the outline of it. It was roughly humanoid, but decidedly not human or any other race one often encountered. Its shoulders were at least four feet wide, heaving up and down not unlike a pair of bellows. On its head was what seemed to be a crown made of various mismatched tools and gadgets, reaching a height well over seven feet. Bill instinctively took a step back, his free hand going for his cutlass.

At that motion, the thing whirred around to face Bill and Ayda. The flickering light of a lantern where an eye should be stared at the two scrambling fugitives, taking them in. Its shoulders relaxed. It lumbered forward, hulking over them, and they could see it a little better.

It was a warforged, looking bedraggled and in heavy disrepair. A chalky sailor’s shirt, torn and stained with blood, covered its upper body. Copper wiring was sticking out of several creaking joints. Instead of a pair of hands it had a large claw and a four-barreled cannon, which seemed to be fully loaded and ready to shoot.

“I have been looking for you,” it said, its voice sounding like crunching gravel. “But this is no time to talk. Go to the statue of Mad Davy Jones and turn left. Third house. The door is open.” Bill held on a little tighter to Ayda, whose mouth had fallen agape.

“Do ye think Bill Seacaster simply flees at the first sight of a fight?” he set, taking a step forward so he was face to sort-of-face with the thing.

“You are carrying a child in your arms. Run!”

Huffing through his nose, Bill heeded the order, if only because Ayda was tugging at the lapels of his coat with an urging insistence. So for the third time that day, Bill Seacaster avoided a fight at the behest of another. Appalling.

Behind them the rest of the vanguard started screaming as the warforged continued its attack, giving the two fugitives a chance to escape. 

The dreary streets of Four Castles were abandoned and desolate at first glance, although there was no doubt in Bill’s mind that plenty of villains were watching the fleeing pair with keen eyes from the comfort of the dark corners and alleys. Four Castles had once been a decent place residing people of all walks of life, with many close-knit communities that provided safety in numbers. But after a massive revamp of Galleyard two generations ago the process of gentrification caused the poorer side of Leviathan to remain while the upper and middle classes found their homes in better conditions. No government official batted an eye at the neighborhood anymore and it fell into disrepair. Nowadays the only safety in numbers could be found in the many local gangs that hounded the streets. No one actually bothered to enforce the laws of Leviathan - few as they were - here, thus they didn't apply.

Bill almost thought they had gotten lost, but then the familiar stone face of Mad Davy Jones loomed up and Bill made a quick turn left. There was only one house with the lights still on, so Bill guessed that was it. It was a simple and neglected shack made out of rotted driftwood like the ones you could find all over Four Castles, the kind which had interiors with a bloodier history than the court of Fallinel. From what Bill could see through the window, the insides weren’t any less shabby.

Like the warforged had promised, the door was indeed open. However, unlike she had said, a figure was standing on the threshold, cocking his head curiously at the quickly-approaching figures. He was a young red tiefling boy dressed in colorful rags, barely older than seven.

“Oh, did Jamina send you?” he asked, not arguing with them as Bill pushed him aside and hurried in with Ayda still in his arms, slamming the door shut behind them. “She didn’t mention any visitors, Mister––” The urchin fell quiet, staring at Bill’s one-eyed face in reverent recognition. “Oh my, you’re Bill Seacaster, aren’t you?”

Bill carefully set Ayda down and peeked around the curtains into the street. He spotted a few drunkards lying soiled in the streets, but no bounty hunters. The tiefling continued talking, oblivious to how distressed the newcomers were. “Wowie, face to face with the great Bill Seacaster. My name’s Alistair, Alistair Ash, sir. Y’know, when I grow up, I want to be just as great as you are.”

“Well, when that day comes, be sure to pay me a visit,” Bill said, jovially slinging his arm over the boy and drawing him nearer so their faces were uncomfortably close. “That’ll be the day we fight out a duel to the death, for there can only be one person as great as Bill Seacaster!”

“Wow,” Alistair breathed, eyes as wide as saucers. That shut him up.

Ayda sat down on a wobbly wooden chair, taking deep breaths. Bill was worried that he’d soon lose her again, but her breaths became more even and after a quiet minute she opened her eyes, which were clear and free from tears. Brave girl.

“Thank you,” she whispered faintly to Bill. She was so tiny, and when she was speaking so softly it was almost as if she was barely there. He squeezed her shoulder in response.

The thanks did not sit well with him. He felt like her gratitude was undeserved since it had been Bill’s own fault that this six-year-old child whose safety relied on him had gotten captured because he had so completely lost himself in a fight.

His way of life could not be called immature, since it was filled with too many dangers, but it did lack a lot of the responsibilities other ‘mature’ adults had to deal with.

Bill always forgot that when he was around children he had to be the latter kind of adult.

As he pondered about this and how it related to his fatherhood, the door swung open. Jamina ducked her head to enter through the door, looking severely more bloodied and damaged than before but just as composed.

“Extinguish the lanterns.” While Alistair hurriedly started blowing out all the lights in the room, the warforged toppled a table and barricaded the door with it. “They stopped their attack and retreated when their pistols and swords failed to do any permanent damage to me. They are still looking for you, but have lost your trail. Captain, girl, go down to the basement. Ash, get us some lights.”

She said the words with the confidence of a hardened captain, and it came as no surprise to Bill when Alistair stiffened up, saluted, and said: “Aye aye, Jamina!”

Bill usually did not do well under the leadership of another captain, but this time he relented without as much as a complaint and followed Ayda and Jamina down the wonky wooden stairs that creaked with every step. It was very chilly in the barely furnished and dark room, but standing next to the little half-phoenix was like standing next to a forge.

“Miss, ye’ve got me gratitude for savin’ me and me young companion, but who in the blazin’ nine hells are ye?”

“My creator bestowed the name Jamina Joy upon me, and you may call me such as well. The boy you just met is Alistair, he––”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about introductions,” Bill interrupted rudely. “When I ask who ye are, I ask for intentions, not names.”

Jamina towered over him, her arms crossed and no expression on her face. Any sensible fellow would be careful with their words around a massive warforged who undoubtedly could rip someone’s spine out with her bare hands, but Bill was a man who had squared up against a house-sized living tornado and had come out of it with his life and a new crew member. He stared right back at her, unflinching.

“I understand the nature of Leviathan,” she started, drawing each word out slowly and clearly as if Bill was some bothersome child. “It is a lawless land of chaos. I am aware that not many people on Leviathan are innocents. But this is a city where true monsters live next to folk who just want to see the end of the day. I make sure those monsters can never prey upon anyone else.

“My intention, _pirate captain_ ,” she said, the title sounding like an accusation, “is to ensure that the good folk can live their lives in peace. I want Leviathan to be a safe place, fruitless as that effort is.”

“Miss Jamina’s been around the Castles for a long time,” another voice above them said. Alistair, carrying a hooded lantern and four flickering candles, was coming down the stairs. “She’s only done good. Please trust her.”

Bill was just about to make a remark on how nobleness didn’t always equal trustworthiness, especially in Leviathan, but shut his mouth when Ayda audibly gasped.

“You’re the Joyless,” the girl stammered in realization. “The heartless hero from _the Joyless’ Crusade_. My babysitter, Bob, always sings that song to me when I’m tired. I thought you were a myth.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that song,” Alistair said enthusiastically, setting the hooded lamp on the ground of tamped down dirt and clay. “Snuck into the Gardens one day, just to listen to the sound of Mister Gainglynn’s voice. He’s really good!” He hummed a few notes of a song that sounded unsurprisingly familiar to Bill.

“Boy, if yer gonna tip us a stave and sing a true and well shanty, ye gotta do it the right way!” Cos Gainglynn had approached Bill a few times to write ballads and shanties about the tale of the famous pirate captain, and Bill was grateful to the man for spreading his story. Their partnership hadn’t lasted long – they were both busy men after all, with many places to be – but Bill had learned many things from the bard. How to play a good and true shanty was one of them.

“There is no need––” Jamina protested, but Bill had already fished his accordion out of his bottomless pocket and started playing the first notes. His voice, gruff and loud as a foghorn, bellowed through the small shack. Alistair joined in, hesitant at first but increasingly more enthusiastic. Ayda only hummed along, swaying her head to the tune of the music.

There’s a strange fella,

a fella without any fame,

She dwells on these decks

and the Joyless’s her name;

She’s bound to Four Castles

With the streets filled with woe,

When seeking safe haven,

to the Castles I go.

Derry down, down, down derry down!

O, the Joyless a-stalkin’

For the villains so vile;

On the high roaring seas

One admires this style;

With no heart in her chest

And no mercy to show,

She’s the Joyless o’Castles,

Where she is I’ll go!

Derry down, down, down derry down.

There were a couple more couplets, but Bill was no Octavio Costello Gainglynn and had long forgotten the rest of the lyrics, so he simply let the puff of the accordion drift to a long and shaky exhale, receiving Ayda and Alistair’s appreciative applause with a smirking bow.

“That was completely unnecessary and the opposite of covert,” Jamina grumbled, but for the first time since they had met her, her stone lips weren’t fixed in a permanent scowl and her gravelly voice had lost a bit of its edge.

“Warforged these days just don’t appreciate good music,” Bill remarked with a shrug.

“Can we please go to business?”

“Aye, that seems fair and square.”

“You are Bill Seacaster, Captain of the Hangman, are you not?” It was apparently not a question, because she continued before Alistair could fervently nod. “I have heard of your exploits. You are a legend.”

“Why thank you.”

She produced a low rumbling that sounded a lot like the wooden hull of a ship scraping across jagged reefs. “Things have been put into motion, and I think this island’s future is looking grim if they are allowed to continue. I think I… No,” she corrected, “I think _Leviathan_ needs your help.” It was painful to watch the way she had to force the reluctant plea from her lips, probably not very used to ask for assistance from anyone.

Bill bared his teeth in a face-splitting grin, snorting amicably at the tension she betrayed. Once, Bill wouldn’t have lifted a finger without the discussion of payment, but he liked to think he had some semblance of decency left in his old rotten heart. 

Also, today was a lot of fun. He hadn’t had this much excitement since that time he and his crew had faced off against the Sea Witch Mother of the north, back when his body was young and his mind focused on nothing but treasure.

“It would be this old legend’s honor to help out an old myth in need,” he smirked, punching his puffed up chest with his fist. He accidentally caught a glance of Ayda, who was hiding a self-satisfied smile behind the knuckles of her fist. Visibly relieved, Jamina’s broad shoulders sagged and she lowered her head in gratitude.

“Ash, tell them what you told me.”

The boy perked up, excited to be given the chance to speak. “Right. Well, I met Jamina about a year ago, when someone was tryin’ to steal my bones, would you believe it? She barged in and threw that creep into the ocean like he was made of feathers! She kept an eye on me after that, which was a good thing ‘cuz I almost die a lot!

“Anyhow, about six weeks ago I found myself working for Bosun Stormchaser. She often hires urchins ‘cuz we’re small and easy to miss, but when we kick the bucket, no one really misses us, y’know?”

“You shouldn’t be treated like that!” Ayda spoke up, aggrieved for the sake of someone she had just met. It warmed Bill’s iron heart a little. One thing he loved most about kids was that lens of childish innocence they looked through, making them mad at the common injustices that made the world what it was.

“Don’t I know it.” Alistair gave her a sad shrug and picked up the thread of his story. “Our job was to deliver messages from the Helm to a few boats moored to the city, who always quickly sailed off after reading it. It was all very shady, so I thought by myself, hey Allistair, maybe this is something Jamina wants to know about. Now I can’t read an A nor Z, but luckily Jamina can.”

“The notes were negotiations for a massive arms deal,” Jamina took over. “Heavy artillery, siege weaponry, items of incredible magic power, bought from all corners of the world. The sums of money that were discussed to be exchanged were excessive. The coffers of Leviathan could not possibly hold such sums.

“So ever since Alistair told me of this news, I have been keeping tabs on irregular events pertaining to Leviathan's finances. I could find little information, but two weeks after the note reached me some of my other contacts informed me that Cotton Jack, Madame Singe, and Pete Heinous all died under mysterious circumstances shortly after they moored to Leviathan. Charlie Vain and Jenny Henrings have not been seen for over four weeks. I thought it to be unrelated at first.” She heaved a long sigh as strong as an ocean breeze. “It wasn’t.”

With a rusty creaking noise a steel flap attached to her right hip flew open to reveal a locker containing multiple documents. She straightened the rolled-up papers and handed them to Ayda and Bill. They were wanted posters depicting the nautical wrongdoers she'd just listed, all promising hefty sums for their arrests.

“Six days ago, when Stormchaser informed all hunters in the city of the bounty prepared for you, Seacaster, it clicked. Highcourt especially has put great bounties on many notorious pirates’ heads, sometimes to be brought in alive, but more often than not simple proof of termination suffices. It is admittedly a leap, but I am convinced that the Bombardier has been lining his pockets with Highcourt’s rewards.”

“Some of those buccaneers I called me friends,” Bill grumbled. “Pete Heinous still owes me a barrel o’silver.” He had shared drinks with every single name she had listed and butted heads with even more. They had all been people, pirates in the truest sense of the word. He grimaced, unconsciously clenching his fist. Apparently things were getting more personal than he had thought. A bounty was one thing, but taking out people Bill felt vaguely amicable to was another. “I’m thinking that bastard might owe Jack Ketch a little dance.”

“Does he, solely for that? There is no law establishing it illegal for the monarch to arrest residents without cause,” Jamina remarked, her head tilted. “Leviathan is a base for pirates, but it is no sanctuary.”

“Sellin’ yer people out like that is a mockery to the Pirates’ Code,” Bill spat. Next to him Alistair’s head snapped towards him, his face painted with undisguised idolization. He wasn’t the first kid in love with the romanticized version of the traditional ways of piracy that reacted like that when Bill brought up the Code.

The Pirate’s Code. Those two words alone made Bill’s bones feel heavy and old. A code of honor for the honorless. It was pointless, restricting, and horribly inconvenient for a pirate that just wanted to go about their day. Many pirates of today’s generation didn’t even swear by it anymore, and it had slowly started to become a relic of the past.

Yet Bill had never in his life broken his oath to the Code. Because sometimes it was all that separated them from becoming inhuman monstrosities, pillaging villages and burning ships just for the sake of it. Piracy was resistance, not purposeless plundering.

The lightbulb of Jamina’s eye flickered uncontrollably and she had to stop staring at her guest in order to screw it in a little tighter. Bill turned to Ayda in the meantime. She met his gaze with a wobbly smile, her hands wrapped around the candle Alistair had handed her. Bill opened his mouth to say something, though he wasn’t sure what just yet, but Jamina had fixed the bulb that was her eye and continued talking.

“Your recent troubles come from the fact that the Bombardier now seeks to collect your bounty. The price he offered is considerable, but nothing compared to what I believe administrative institutions from the mainland are willing to pay in order to put a stop to your activities.” 

“Aye. I’ve got ‘bout 250,000 gold blunts on me head, last I heard.” Not an insulting number, although he would have a lot fewer issues sailing the international seas if it had been a little lower.

Alistair whistled through his teeth. “You can buy a lotta weapons with that.”

“But why does he want so many weapons?” Ayda piped up, a confused frown wrinkling her candlelit face.

“Ash?”

The boy put his hand on his side and sighed deeply, his whole body moving with the flow of air. “Well, with Jamina full of questions with no answers, I thought it might be time for me to play the hero!” He smiled sheepishly, proud excitement glowing in his eyes. “So three days ago, I slipped into the Helm and did some eavesdroppin’! I’ll tell you, I felt just like a real spy!”

“Just for the record, I did not ask him to do that,” Jamina clarified with a grumble. 

“When no one was there, I stuffed myself inside one of those fancy cabinets in the king’s office and waited two whole hours until someone came in. Couldn’t hear much at first, and what I did pick up I didn’t really understand. They was talkin’ about wars and invasions and whatnot. Lots of talk about a place called Stellemere, and how they could put a base there.” 

“Stellemere. That is the capital of Fallinel.” Ayda pursed her lips in bewilderment. “I don’t understand.”

“They’re planning an invasion,” Jamina said. “I checked with my sources in the Helm. The Bombardier wants to make Fallinel the new Leviathan. A whole pirate nation, all for the king to command.”

“Yeah. That’s why they got the weapons. To conquer Fallinel.”

Bill kept staring, waiting for them to say anything else, something that made sense. When they both kept silent, awaiting a reaction, he jerked his chin up, nonplussed. “Even with all the weapons in the world, that’s a suicide mission. He’s ne’er gonna be able to muster enough troops to take the city, let alone the whole island!”

Jamina shook her head. “Leviathan is home to over a million people. If every citizen were to join in the assault, it would not fail. Not even Fallinel has the firepower to stop an army like that.”

“But that’s never gonna happen,” Bill protested, trying to wrap his mind around what she was saying. “Like ye said before, not all people livin’ in this hellhole are fighters. Why would they go out to die in a war they have no stake in?”

“They would if they had no other choice.”

“Explain.” He narrowed his eyes.

“There was one other thing Allistair overheard.” Jamina’s stone scowl made a return, although this time it was not directed at Bill. “The king needs a force of a magnitude never seen before, and he has planned for a way to get it.

“Sixty explosives have been placed around Leviathan. An hour before we reach the shores of Fallinel, they will set off. It is enough to sink the ship.”

“What?!”

“He’s going to force the people to fight.” Ayda’s face paled as she processed the horror of it. “Because if they don’t, they’ll drown.” She stumbled a step back, finding purchase on the wall and staring blankly ahead. “He is willing to destroy everything.”

Sacrificing Leviathan to start a war. It was almost brilliant. Fallinel was all magic and ancient knowledge, but their land and naval forces were poorly trained and low in numbers. It might even work. Bill’s face did a complicated thing as he took a second to appreciate the tactical maneuver.

Then his blood started to boil.

How dare he. How _dare_ he. To not uphold the Pirate Code, to be a spineless stool pigeon selling out fellow buccaneers for a profit, those were things Bill could let slip under certain circumstances even though he would never approve. But this. This was a betrayal of the worst sort, a treacherous deed that could not go unpunished.

Leviathan’s legacy wasn’t the impact she made on stories or the rotting shipwrecks sunken to the bottom of the Celestine Sea left in her wake. It was her people. The Bombardier was a myopic fool if he did not understand that.

Leviathan was a fucking mess and every time Bill was dragged back to the den he got a headache just by being in this place where stupidity seemed to be rewarded more often than not. But even he could not deny that she was a safe haven and a home.

Pirates were supposed to be there for their own. Society had mercilessly rejected them so in their new lives they _took_ instead of earned to take care of what they loved. Pirates gave each other oranges and sang shanties together when the work was done. They fought for pleasure and they fought for glory and every one of them had their own adventures to go on, whether that was an exciting quest or starting a family.

The population of Leviathan was one big crew. And its captain had failed them.

“Why does he want the Gold Gardens?” he heard Ayda’s voice cut through the red haze that was his furious mind. Jamina’s answer barely registered as his teeth were grinding.

“Besides the Bombardier’s interest in the number of magical artifacts they own, I believe Garthy O’Brien has the power to turn their personal sanctuary into a safe place that will not go under alongside the rest of the city. It would be a place of shelter to which people could flee.”

Ayda exhaled a shivery breath, shaking her head with a forlorn look on her face. “Okay. Can we maybe find the explosives and remove them?”

“No,” Bill snapped curtly before Jamina could reply. “If we want to keep Leviathan safe, that man needs to die. No other ways.”

Jamina hummed in assent. “I will help you in whatever way I can.” She put her tripod hand on Alistair’s shoulder, making the skinny boy lose his balance under its weight. “Ash, go to Bimothy’s place and ask if you can stay with him during the day. Things are going to go down and you need to keep out of harm’s way.”

“I will stay with you,” Ayda said to Bill without room for discussion, not that Bill was inclined to start one. The girl had proven herself useful and if she didn’t want to call it a day and head back to the Gardens after almost having her brain eaten, he could do nothing but admire her courage. He grunted in approval.

“Alright hearties, it sounds like we’ve only got one thing to do.” He ascended the stairs, not looking back to see if the others were following behind. “I’m gonna challenge the Bombardier to a fight to the death.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWZ0fX75DD8) to David Coffin singing 'the Dreadnaught'  
>    
> If you laughed at the Pete Heinous mention or at any of my other attempts at butchering historical pirates' names, please send me your address so I can mail you a wedding ring with which I will propose to you.


	4. Toll for the Brave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from a march of the same name written by William Cowper.

“You want to challenge me?” The Bombardier’s venomous smile was slightly amused as he pressed the tips of his fingers against each other and leaned back in his gold foiled fauteuil.

Mister Seacaster and Ayda had reached the Helm, the king’s palace on the easternmost side of Leviathan, half an hour ago, demanding parley. After a few minutes of nervous waiting they were granted an audience, although their weapons and spellbooks were confiscated and three guards followed close on their heels all the way to the office of the King of Leviathan.

Just like most of what Ayda had seen from passing through the long hallways of the Helm, the office interior was a splendid display of wealth. Its velvety opulence almost reminded her of the Gold Gardens, except the Gardens were a place of comfort that aimed to put every patron at a blissful ease. The extravagant air of the Helm, with its many portraits of kings past disdainfully looking down at any visitors and countless fragile art pieces lining the wall, was oppressive and meant to intimidate instead of welcome.

Ayda had never seen the Bombardier in person before. Garthy had always made sure she stayed far away from him. She had known the king of the island she lived on was just a human man, but some part of her had always imagined him as a figure taller than life with a face unrecognizable through scars and long fangs with ragged edges. A monster that children like her should fear.

Instead he looked like a man she might have crossed when wandering through the rich neighborhoods of Aftward or Poop City. Slick brown hair pushed back in a tarred pigtail, a fancy blue doublet with silver buttons and seaweed green eyes. Only one faint scar marked his pale face, running from the bridge of his nose to his chin. A couple of gold teeth reflected the sunlight falling through the porthole as he smiled. And of course, the golden crown set with emeralds and rubies, signifying his elevated position above the rest of the country.

Garthy had once warned her that while the buccaneers and scoundrels that drunkenly stumbled through the streets were not the kind of people she could simply invite over for dinner, it was the businessmen of Leviathan she should truly watch out for. They had established their place here not through straightforward violence, but through cunning and deceit.

This man did not look like a monster, but he had the placating smile of a businessman.

“What’s to stop me from having my men kill you right here where you sit?”

“A stronghearted lass named Jamina Joy. Ye might know her as the Joyless, if ye know yer lore.” Mister Seacaster reclined back in his chair, thoroughly untroubled by the fact that he had walked into the lion’s den and was now poking the lion with a stick. Ayda couldn’t help but admire his confidence, especially since she had turned into an incoherent mess the moment they set foot in the Helm, avoiding any eye contact and staying close to Mister Seacaster’s side at all times. “She’s gone up to the Ramble with a handwritten document, signed by yers truly, containin’ all yer devious plans for the Fallinel invasion, including what ye think should happen to Leviathan.

“Now, I hear ye thinkin’, those stiff salts’re ne’er gonna believe that, those are the words of a madman flyin’ three sheets to the wind. And ye’re right. But, if they hear ye killed me while bein’ under the protection of the sacred right of parley, they’re gonna take that account a whole lot more serious.”

“I should have burned the Ramble to the ground the day I got this position,” the king sighed, momentarily pinching the bridge of his nose. His gaze darted over to a figure standing in the back of the room, her face shadowed under the brim of a calico bucket hat.

Bosun Gilly Stormchaser didn’t much look the part of a monster either, although unlike the Bombardier her appearance truly instilled fear in mortal men and Ayda felt incredibly agitated just being in the same room as her. She was a muscular triton woman with blue skin as dark as the sea under the moonlight and a nest of long curly black hair. She was dressed in all-black clothes. The only elements of color to her outfit were her belts, strapped around her waist and her shoulder, the leather dyed a deep red, and a dangling necklace of many tiny sun-bleached bones strung together. Ayda wasn’t sure if the bones were humanoid or not.

Her cold and intense silver eyes glinted out from under her hat every now and then, like when she gave an almost imperceptible nod to the king just now.

“Very well then, Bill. I accept your challenge,” the Bombardier said, no doubt in response to the bosun’s advice. “Pistols, then swords. In exactly one hour, we fight at the plaza of Gibbety Square, for the whole island to see.”

“I’ll give my hunters the order to back down,” Bosun Stormchaser said, her voice as cold as seawater in the middle of winter. “For now.”

That was apparently the end of the conversation. No one offered any pleasantries as Bill turned around and left, the trail of his coat wappering behind him, so Ayda didn’t either. She avoided any curious gaze on her and clung to the corner of Mister Seacaster’s coat like a lifeline as he led her out of the Helm. It wasn’t until they reached the ostentatious streets of Poop City that Ayda felt like she could breathe freely again. Behind them the ginormous steering wheel that haloed the Helm loomed like a setting sun, casting them in shadow.

Mister Seacaster made no comment on the conversation they just had, speeding down the palace steps like he couldn’t wait to get out of the posh high-class district as soon as possible. Ayda had to run to catch up to him.

“Whaddaya think o’ all that?” 

“I don’t like him very much,” she said. The king had barely acknowledged her existence. Usually she didn’t mind it all that much when people ignored her, but unlike those people the Bombardier hadn’t done it because he found her weird or annoying. He just assumed she wasn’t important, while she _knew_ that she was. She was the mistress of the Compass Points Library and he hadn’t even asked for her name. “And bosun Stormchaser is a bit creepy, but I think she is also very smart. Did you notice that the Bombardier only accepted your challenge after looking at her for her opinion?”

Mister Seacaster whistled appreciatively. “Very sharp, lass! I didn’t catch that, but it’s not strange. She knows her battles. I think she may be cookin’ up something, and it’s not gonna be good for us.”

“Do you think they will honor the terms?”

“A man like that wouldn’t honor a promise to his dying granny. Be prepared for anything. And ye’re to stay outta the fight, savvy? Last thing I need is that pretty devil angel throttling me neck after all this is done.”

Ayda’s stomach turned at the thought that Garthy didn’t know where they had gone, or if she was safe… She hadn’t learned the Sending spell yet, because there was a particular glyph, the one that allowed a connection between different people to be drawn, that she had never managed to fully replicate in her spellbook. Yet. They must be very worried. “Do you think we should have warned Garthy about this duel?”

“Oh, I’m sure they already know. But we can’t wait for this duel to start until they’re here, can we now?”

“They almost never leave the Gardens,” she murmured. Mister Seacaster made a non-committal sound that might have been a regretful assent.

They both continued to walk towards Gibbety Square, where in one hour and twenty-five minutes the duel would take place. The news was already being spread around as they walked. It seemed like everyone in Leviathan was out today, talking with their neighbors about the challenge. A couple of people even recognized Mister Seacaster as they passed them. Most of them were very kind and gave words of encouragement, but one time an old man blocked their path, spat at his feet and said he hoped Bill would die in agony. None of it bothered the pirate, but Ayda thought it was very mean and retributed it by flinging a Tasha’s Hideous Laughter at him. Her companion roared with joy at the mischief and still had tears in his eyes when they reached the plaza. All of Ayda’s attention was focused on jumping from cobblestone to cobblestone without touching the small patches of dirt while at the same time avoiding bumping into the many market-goers. She was still putting effort into that self-appointed task when Mister Seacaster poked her shoulder.

“Speak o’the angelic devil and their minions shall appear!” he said, gesturing towards a familiar tiefling that was talking to some merchants and perked up when she spotted Ayda. It was Trixie, a nineteen-year-old girl that had just started working at the Gardens.

“Trixie?” Ayda stayed at Mister Seacaster’s side as the girl hurried towards them, her heart twisting in a strange way.

Ayda had never seen Garthy outside the Gold Gardens. One time she had been reading in the Compass Points Library and had completely lost track of time. Night had already fallen by the time she realized that she should be heading back, and every child in Leviathan knew that it was madness to traverse the dark streets of the pirate den alone. So she had done what Garthy had always told her to do in this situation and waited for them to pick her up. Bob and her father were the ones who came to get her instead.

Garthy didn’t like to leave the Gold Gardens, Bobby had told her on the way back. The City made them anxious, while the Gardens were safe and familiar. Ayda understood a little; all new things were scary. But once you discovered them, they weren’t new anymore, and thus a little less scarier. It had been that way with Mister Seacaster.

So when Ayda wrapped her arms around Trixie instead of Garthy, she was sad that Garthy hadn’t come to get her. Not because she missed them, although she did, but because not even her going missing had been enough of a reason for them to finally try out something new.

“Hey Wings,” Trixie said. “Are you alright? Hurt anywhere?” She gave Ayda a quick check-over and confirmed that she wasn’t hurt, a feat that was quite shocking considering all the events of today. “I’m here to take you back to Garthy, they’re really worried about you.”

“No.”

Trixie was taken aback by the curt reply. Ayda could understand why; she usually tried to be as pleasant as possible so people wouldn’t get mad at her. “Sweetie, this is not the kind of thing we can argue about.”

“Mister Seacaster gave me an orange,” she said, crossing her arms. “I will not leave him when he’s fighting the king.”

“You… what?” She stared at Mister Seacaster.

“Gonna kill yer tyrant for ye. Ye’re welcome,” Bill said casually, inspecting the seam of his leather glove.

Trixie recovered quickly from the shock of that statement and doubled down on trying to persuade Ayda, but she was headstrong and made it very clear that she would not voluntarily leave Gibbety Square until the duel was done. When it became clear that she wouldn’t budge, Trixie stormed off. It made Ayda sad that she seemed to have made Trixie mad, or at least very worried, but she needed to be exactly where she was.

Mister Seacaster watched Ayda watch Trixie leave and squeezed her shoulder, hard enough to make her flash a grimace of discomfort, but she had gathered that rough gestures like this were his way of being affectionate.

As Trixie disappeared out of sight, another woman put her tripod hand out as a greeting towards them. Jamina had already come down from Crow’s Keep and was waiting in the square in the shade of the Row and the Ruction. She told them that she had left the witness report in the Ramble, and that most of the elder pirates had believed her sincerity, but could not act upon it. But it confirmed to them that, were Mister Seacaster to win, they would be assured of powerful allies.

“It’s yer duty to batten down the hatches, Miss Joy,” Mister Seacaster instructed. Ayda had never seen a captain giving orders on a ship before, but she imagined they had the same determined look in their eyes as Mister Seacaster had just then. “Make sure no citizens’ll come to harm during the fight. Oh, and find a safe place for little Miss Aguefort. I want not a single hair on her head cranked by one o’those no-good pieces of shark bait.” He turned to Ayda. “Ye’re gettin’ to the Row and the Ruction at any sign of trouble, savvy?” 

Ayda bristled at that, feeling like she was treated like a little child instead of the wizard-in-training she was, but she ultimately understood. Mister Seacaster had been in trouble because of her twice today, and he couldn’t afford that now, not when there was so much at stake.

“But I want to help!” she protested nonetheless, more for the sake of speaking up than anything else. Although she had never seen one before, she knew that no outsiders could interfere during a pirate duel. 

“Ye are helpin’ me, lass, just by bein’ here. Ye’re remindin’ this old salt what he’s fightin’ for.” He glanced around as if to check that no one had heard that before kneeling down, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Keep yer eyes open for any sign of foul play. Mitchell’s gotta be one helluva fighter to bring me down, and I think they know that.” 

As if summoned by having his last name spoken aloud, a small procession came down from Aftward, a mismatched collection of scarred, tattered mercenaries and supercilious merchants. Confidently helming them was the Bombardier, striding forward dressed in a single-shoulder ermine mantle and that reached his knees. Two gem-laid cutlasses were stripped to his belt as well as a silver pistol. The polished crown on his head reflected the low light of the setting sun.

Ayda wondered if he often visited Galleyard or any other part of the island, or if he just stayed in his palace all day.

Bill straightened up and walked out of the warehouse’s shade, giving the king an informal two-fingered salute that was most likely meant as an insult to the king’s status, seeing that most people on the square that had gathered to watch the upcoming spectacle lowered their head or even fully bowed. But a few of them continued to stand as tall as Mister Seacaster.

So did Ayda, feeling pride in her unyielding posture.

Mister Seacaster crossed the distance until he and the Bombardier’s court met in the middle of Gibbety Square. Ayda nearly followed, already so used to wandering the island with the pirate at her side, but she was held back by Jamina, who took her around the fountain to a row of shops. The two men shook each other's hands before stepping back, creating a respectful distance. No doubt the air between them wasn’t so respectful. A weasley man with red sideburns scurried up to them and started explaining the rules of engagement to Mister Seacaster. 

Jamina softly grumbled to draw Ayda’s attention away from the duellists. “Can you get up there?” She pointed with the cannon barrels that were her left hand towards the roof of a small grocery shop crammed between a bar and a pawn shop. Ayda poised on her tiptoes and craned her neck, noticing that there was a small and bare terrace on top of the roof. It was empty, tucked away, and a good fifteen feet above the ground.

“I can,” she nodded. Jamina carefully gave Ayda a well-meant pat on her head, a sign of affection that was very rare because most people did not like to get first-degree burns by ruffling her hair. Jamina had no such problems.

Ayda studied the automaton for a moment, admiring both the arcane spellcraft that had been applied to breathe life into this being of stone and metal as well as the woman’s courage. Jamina Joy was a very brave, very good person, she thought. Then she stretched her wings and flew up to the terrace. Before she sat down at the edge, she used Prestidigitation to clean up a few dried bird droppings.

It was an excellent view over the square. She could let her legs dangle from the low parapet as she watched as Jamina started gently splitting the crowd of onlookers into two sections, creating a clearing in the middle, hopefully large enough for the fight to take place.

Mister Seacaster was still nodding along to redhead’s agitated prattle with visible disinterest, while the Bombardier had taken off his lush mantle and was doing some practice swings with his sword. The bosun wasn’t near him, or anywhere that Ayda could see for that matter. But before she could scan the surroundings for the triton woman more thoroughly, the man with the sideburns finished his conversation with Mister Seacaster and stepped forward, a scroll in his hand and loudly demanding everyone’s attention. Ayda realized that he must have been the coxswain of Leviathan, the man responsible for the island’s navigation.

“This is a matter of honor to be settled once and for good in the here and now. The parties have agreed to combat and have accepted common rules of engagement. The parties have further agreed that no quarter will be asked, nor given.” He cleared his throat nervously, eyes darting between the two duelists as if hoping one of them would surrender before any blood was shed. Both men only dipped their heads in affirmation, drawing their guns and aiming for the other’s chest.

“Alright then! Cock your pistols!”

The silence on the square was deafening, and the sounds of the hammers clicking felt just as loud as the gunshots that would soon ring.

“One... two... three!”

A collective gasp was drawn from the crowd. Ayda had stopped breathing all together and leaned forward, her fingers gripping the edge of the parapet so tightly that her knuckles turned pale.

Neither man fell down. Mister Secaster’s shot had skimmed the Bombardier’s upper bicep, while the king’s shot had flown wide.

There was a second in which both men waited for the other to draw their sword to initiate the second and final part of the fight. Mister Secaster was of course the first one to unsheath his weapon and rushed forward with a battlecry.

Ayda was biting the nails of both of her thumbs at the same time, her fingers tangled as though in prayer while she focused on the two men locked in battle, sparks flying with the speed of their clashing swords. Mister Seacaster was easily the better swordsman. She didn’t know a lot about battles but it looked like the challenger was in control of the situation. It seemed like the stories about Solace’s most feared pirate were all true.

A minute of swords clashing passed and the twisting nervousness in Ayda’s guts alleviated as it became increasingly clear that Mister Seacaster had the upper hand.

Now that her nerves weren’t getting the better of her anymore, Ayda could allow herself to become entranced by the way the men fought. The Bombardier was not bad; he was quick on his feet and if he was clashing with any other man he probably would have been a very good match. 

But this was William Seacaster he was up against. This was the legend who had practically _invented_ the rules of pirate combat, only to stop following them the moment it had become convenient for him. He was ruthless and fast and took so much palpable _joy_ in what he was doing. One particularly quick swipe went completely around the king's defenses and cut deep into the flesh of his side. The Bombardier ducked to avoid a second swipe and quickly rolled out of the way. Instead of throwing himself on Mister Seacaster’s nonchalantly forward-pointing cutlass, he begrudgingly took a few steps backwards.

Seeing them separated was like having a charm spell broken. She suddenly remembered that she was to keep an eye out for foul play. And the biggest suspect for foul play was still nowhere to be seen. Ayda tore her eyes off the combatants and ignored the duel in favor of scanning the crowd.

Bosun Stormchaser was not there. But she was not the only one who was missing from the picture.

All of the Bombardier’s people had left the crowd.

She hesitated drawing that conclusion at first, because her own mind could sometimes play tricks on her, but no, she was certain, because she clearly remembered that all the people that had arrived with the Bombardier had been standing on the left side of the combatants, whereas most of Mister Seacaster’s supporters had convened on the right. At the beginning of the duel both sides of the crowd had been about as dense as the other, but now the right was way larger in numbers.

An uneasy feeling creeping up the back of her spine, she did what few people did when searching for something, but which she as a person able to fly had learned pretty early on; she looked up.

High above her, something small was falling, gravity directing it straight to the square with almost terminal velocity.

Her eyes shot wide open and she turned to the spectacle below her, a scream on her lips. “Mister Seacaster, watch––” The last part of her warning was blown away as a couple of feet above the ground, right between Mister Seacaster and the Bombardier, an explosion went off, ripping her cry into pieces. The blast of sound and light engulfed half the plaza, its impact throwing her backwards. She landed on rough gravel, scraping open the skin of her hands and arms. Another explosion followed, and another, and even more, so fast after the other that she lost count.

 _Meteor Shower!_ screamed an unfamiliar side of her mind to her, an instant reaction triggered by a memory she didn’t remember, and although the term seemed unfamiliar to her, it filled her entire body with dread. She stumbled to her feet, pressing her hands against her ears that felt like they had been stuffed with cotton.

The smell of gunpowder and burning wood hit her nose. It hadn’t been meteors crashing from the sky. The plaza had been bombed.

Realizing this, she stared out over Gibbety Square, which had become unrecognizable in a matter of a few seconds. The mishmash of spectators and shoppers had been situated a good distance from where the powerful grenades had gone off, but mass panic could be just as much as a killer as a bombardment. People started screaming and crying, pushing others out of their way in a desperate attempt to get away. 

Her knees buckled and she knelt down behind the parapet, blocking the ravage in front of her from her sight. She had to _focus_ , because she could not close herself off now, this was too important, Mister Seacaster could be _dead-_ -

“Ye’re a fucking madman!” she heard the familiar voice of Mister Seacaster yell over the screaming and the pressure of her own roling mind. The King of Leviathan’s response was lost to the chaos.

Clenching her teeth together so tightly it hurt, she forced herself to breathe in and out until the spiraling fear was pushed back to the edge of her consciousness, an unsolved problem she would deal with later, and she poked her head out over the ridge of the parapet. Her eyes darted over the square, beholding the sea of devastation that the explosions had wrought. Market stands had caught fire and burnt along with their fresh wares. The century-old stone fountain from which water was often tapped by the poorer side of Leviathan's population was completely destroyed by the blasts. Crumbled stone mermaid faces lay detached from their bodies on the and stared with their unchanged mysterious smiles up into the sky. 

And in the midst of this havoc, deliberately avoided by the frightened crowd, there were two persons surrounded by sparks and flames, still continuing their deadly dance.

Ayda’s jaw dropped when she realized that Mister Seacaster was still standing on both feet, his face twisted into a ferocious snarl and his weapon defiantly raised. He had received multiple burns and flesh wounds from the grenades’ shrapnel. His dark green coat had caught fire and he hadn't yet had the chance to put it out. The old captain’s beard and the rest of his clothing were heavily singed. Even more worrying, there was a great amount of sweat gathering on his brow.

The Bombardier had completely flipped the tables, swiping out at Mister Seacaster with near-inhuman speed, fueled by a triumphant sense of self-assured success. He wasn’t even charred, having either somehow completely evaded the blast damage or possessing something that was protecting him from the flames. Mister Seacaster’s stance had become defensive, using his curved sword more like a shield than a weapon.

The mystery of how the Bombardier had been unhurt by the bombs became clear when Mister Seacaster dug his hook into a burning log and chucked it at his enemy. The flames licked uselessly at his hair, like his head was made out of porcelain.

 _Fire immunity_. It made sense. Now knowing what to search for, she caught the flashing glint of a rose gold ring which was too large and impractical to be worn during a fight without a reason. She didn’t need to cast Detect Magic to understand that it was the thing granting the king his protection. Things that had to do with fire usually stood out to her in a certain way, as if the source of elemental magic they had both been forged from recognized her true nature as well.

Squinting against the light of the low-hanging sun, Ayda tried to find the bombers, convinced she would find Bosun Stormcaser among them. Her sight failed her, but her own logic did not. There couldn’t really be another place other than the Mast Hearth, the lowest platform situated on the mainmast of Leviathan, the same mast that had the Crow’s Keep poised on top of it. All the other levels were way too high up, the bombs would have exploded while still in velocity.

The Bombardier’s people must still be up there. Maybe they were content to let the combat play out on its own, confident that their side would come out victorious after the damage they had rained down. But Ayda couldn’t be sure of that. This fight needed to end, now.

She knew that she should have heeded Mister Seacaster’s instructions, but this was _fire_ they were throwing around. Explosions couldn’t hurt her, not with her mother’s celestial blood flowing through her. She tapped into her magical reserves, feeling enough energy left for at least a couple of spell slots, all of which could _help_ Mister Seacaster. Attacking the Bombardier would mean violating the rules of the duel, but she was pretty certain it didn’t count as cheating if the Bombardier had cheated first.

They were on the opposite side of the plaza, too far out of reach for most of Ayda’s spells. Hesitant at first, but gaining more confidence with every stroke of her wings, she took flight. The salty wind rushing past her, she hovered roughly seventy feet up above the fighters and sent four Magic Missiles on their way. All of them slammed into him and almost knocked him to the ground, giving Bill an opportunity to take a swipe at the king’s unprotected flank.

Happy that she could mean something for Mister Seacaster in this battle, she fired off another three translucent bolts. This time the Bombardier’s head snapped towards her, fury in his eyes as he was unable to evade her ranged attacks. Dodging Mister Seacaster’s slash, he grabbed a smooth pebble as big as Ayda’s fist out of the pocket of his pantaloons. “Stormchaser!” she faintly heard him snarl into what she realized must have been a Sending Stone. “Four o’clock! Deal with her!”

Ayda’s throat became very dry when a familiar-shaped silhouette jumped from the Mast Hearth into the rigging, climbing down with the proficient ease of someone who spent their whole life working with ropes. The woman was about fifty feet away from Ayda, grabbing the massive musket previously strapped on her back and raising it with her feet entangled in the ropes. It was so fast that Ayda had no time to fly away.

They made eye contact for a short second, before half of the other woman’s face was obscured by her gun. The bosun lifted her trigger hand up in a two-fingered salute, no expression on her face. Ayda flinched. She almost forgot to keep slapping her wings when she was staring into the barrel of the musket, all her instincts screaming for her to drop her spell components and spellbook and raise her hands in surrender. But she had decided to become part of a battle that, if lost, would mean the end of Leviathan. Surrender was no longer an option.

Despite the dying screams and the crackling sound of a building burning into ashes, Ayda could have sworn that she heard the sound of the gun’s hammer being clicked like she was standing right next to it. She forced her arms to move and traced a glyph in the air, but her red-yellow arcane Shield was not strong enough.

She was barely aware of any pain when the bullet hit just below her clavicle, going straight through her shoulder and her left wing. No matter how hard desperately she beat her wings, she was losing altitude, as if gravity had decided to finally enforce its rules on her. It felt like the ground was moving up towards her instead of the other way around, but the end result was the same. She crashed.

She felt too young and all alone and helpless and she wanted Mister Seacaster and all the people down at the square to be out of harm's way, she wanted to be in the Gold Gardens reading stories aloud to Garthy, she wanted… something. Something nice and warm to cling to, something that would make it seem like it might be okay. She wanted to feel like it would be alright. She wanted to feel safe again.

And she didn't.

Ayda didn’t have a lot of experience with pain. The only thing she could think of that came even close to this was the time she had broken her leg. Nearly a year ago she had tried to fly up to the top of the Crow’s Keep to observe the blood moon that hung above Leviathan like a rusted reflection of a planet. She had not counted on the gusts of wind being much stronger that high above sea level, and her wings hadn’t been able to keep her in the air to prevent her from plunging down a height of almost six hundred feet. An observation deck had been the only thing saving her from a certain death, but she still hadn’t been able to painlessly stand on both feet, even with Garthy’s healing abilities.

Ayda was very aware that the island on which she had been born many times a place was of gratuitous and frequent violence. But she still struggled to wrap her mind around the fact that some people here gave each other broken legs – and worse – just for the sake of their own enjoyment. 

The moment the trembling fingers touched the hole in the flesh of her shoulder she knew that a broken bone was nothing compared to a gunshot wound, and that this world was much crueler than she could have feared.

Carmine blood stained her dress and her fingers. The pain did not feel like a blazing fire like some books had described it to be. Fire she could have endured. This felt like shrapnels of ice being forced into her body, jagged edges tearing at her from the inside and making her whole left arm agonizingly numb.

Garthy had always immediately sent her out of the room whenever someone stumbled into the Gold Gardens with some kind of grotesque injury, so she had no idea what to do in a situation like this. She pressed her shaking right hand against the cut and a sob escaped her lips.

She didn’t know where Mister Seacaster was. Her world had shrunk to the throbbing hurt in her shoulder and the clouds that were passing above her in the pink and orange sky. Her gaze was blurry and she had lost sight of the pirate woman that had shot her, but through the fog that was wrapping around her mind, she sensed rather than saw the point of the barrel aiming in her direction again. The woman had apparently decided that it was better to put a quick end to her suffering.

Maybe it was meant as a mercy. It hurt so bad.

Ayda, unable to get herself to fully rise to her feet, lifted her trembling hands but nothing happened. She was drained. She had no more spell slots and her heartbeat was so loud she couldn’t hear her own thoughts, couldn’t think of any quick cantrips. She could only cross her raised hands defensively in front of her head as the black powder in the musket ignited and the musket shot, too far off for the _bang_ to be heard.

She didn’t want to start anew again. She had just started her first book that had more than three hundred pages, its use of language so convoluted and outdated that Rawlins had had to sit beside her the entire time so they could figure it out together. If she could do that with so little life experience, who knew how great her potential was? She could achieve so many great things, become the most powerful wizard Solace had ever seen.

She realized then what she wanted, besides an unrealistic comfort. She wanted to _live_ after today. Not just be alive. She wanted to do things that her previous incarnations had never done because they were committed to only ever experience the joys of a theoretical world. Ayda wanted friendships to call her own. She wanted to help the people of Leviathan and start book clubs. Maybe she even wanted to fall in love one day, when she was older – because wasn’t that the ultimate form of friendship? – and discover what the world outside the Celestine Sea had to offer.

All those things she realized as she was staring death in the face.

Her eyes fell shut.

...

“Big mistake, lovey.”

No bullet took all those potential futures away. Instead, her present was standing right at the base of the mast, sending the shooter reeling in the rigging after having been hit by a powerful Guiding Bolt.

“Garthy!”

Garthy O’Brien was here, with her. They were still in the same outfit they had been wearing earlier today, save for a white silken shirt that covered their chest bandages. She took a few hitching breaths, not caring any danger she might be in now that she was out in the open. She awkwardly pushed herself off the floor, her wings not functioning well due to the searing pain that was messing with all her motion control. The person she thought of as her parent rushed up to her and caught her before she could stumble and didn’t let go.

“They’re not gonna hurt you, darling.” The half-orc aasimar grabbed her in a tight embrace and pressed her so close she could barely breathe. Words were said, maybe words of comfort or more likely the verbal incantations of a healing spell, as the pain in Ayda’s shoulder lessened and fresh air returned to her lungs, but she heard none of it. She could only hold on to them, sobbing and crying without caring about who might see her weakness. They were here. They were _here_ , with her, and that meant that even if the world was ending she was safe.

“I love you,” she whispered again and again against their chest as little holes were scorched into their shirt by her liquid tears of fire. Garthy hugged her tighter. “I love you _I love you_ I love you.”

“I’m here,” they shushed, brushing a hand through her hair, but all she could hear was _I love you too_. There were no words needed. Their presence was an essay of devotion.

She wished she could stay like this forever, clutched in the warm embrace of the person she considered a parent, but reality had a nasty habit of crashing down on her like a cold shower. It always happened whenever she was immersed in a book in the library and it happened now when another loud sound split the air. Another bullet hit the ground, only a few inches away from Garthy’s feet. Bosun Stormchaser was still up in the rigging, having recovered from Garthy’s attack. Ayda flinched again, harshly reminded by what had almost happened. Garthy quickly grabbed her hand and after sending another Guiding Bolt the bosun’s way they ran away from Gibbety Square together, into the shelter that was the Row and the Ruction. They pumped another healing spell into Ayda as they entered the warehouse until the only proof that Ayda had almost died was the blood on her dress.

The Row and the Ruction was chaos, but that was the normal way of things in the giant warehouse slash fighting ring. What was not normal was that the endless traditional brawl had almost completely stopped. Only two pirates were still slamming into each other with their fists but there was no vigor to be found in their brawling. Just like all the other people, they too seemed distracted by the duel that was raging outside.

It was packed. Attendees and marketplace refugees alike were ardently talking about the ongoing duel and she heard the clanking of coins being exchanged hands as bets were being placed. The atmosphere was electric; it seemed most people were excited to discover the outcome of the fight, exchanging views on who was most likely to win and discussing what would happen if Bill Seacaster came out as the victor. The rest just wanted to see blood spilled.

Ayda’s shoulders, still stiff in remembrance of the healed bullet wound, tensed up, and she tried to make herself look as small as possible. She felt extremely out of place in this overcrowded hot spot.

Garthy wasn’t doing much better, she noticed. They tugged Ayda along with them, heading towards a table right next to the entrance, empty save for a scruffy sailor whose slumped body occupied half the table as he slept off his drunken stupor, completely undisturbed by the ruckus. Many people called out for them, recognizing them as the owner of Leviathan’s most popular establishment. They ignored them all, too focused on slowing their rapid breathing.

She could be the brave one this time. For Garthy, she could be anything.

“Four seconds in, hold for seven, and exhale for eight,” she instructed, not letting go of their hand even after they’d sat down. 

“I was the one who taught you that, darling.”

She pushed a curl back behind her ear with a soft smile. “I did not think I’d ever needed to tell it to you.”

“And here we are.” They exhaled a shaky breath, glancing back and forth from Ayda to the crowd huddled at the windows. “I am not exactly in my element at the moment.”

“I’m really proud of you for being here.”

“Yeah, yeah.” They waved their hand, initially dismissing the compliment but softening when Ayda gave their hand a short squeeze. That soft expression was replaced by a deeply worried frown when a pirate a few feet away from them burst out into a drunken song that was more obscure profanities than normal words. “This is not really the best time for me to be stepping outside my comfort zone.”

“It really is not.”

“But not every day is like this, right?”

“No!” she quickly said. “No, this day is very bad.”

“That’s what I hoped.”

A weary moment of breathing exercises followed. Ayda managed to shut out the sounds of yelling and crying and drunken laughter, focused on the person in front of her and her worry for the person outside.

The sudden blast of gunshots hitting pavement as loud made her almost tumble off her chair. 

“They’re shootin’ at Seacaster from aloft!” someone yelled.

“Oh, ‘n the Bombardier’s just chopped Seacaster’s hook straight off!” another person announced loudly. Ayda’s mouth twitched into a grimace at the excitement in the last commenter's voice, like he was watching just some inconsequential game. Didn’t he understand what was at stake?

She jumped up and tried to get a clearer sight of him, using her height to her advantage by squeezing through the horde pressed at one of the larger windows, not waiting for Garthy to catch up.

Bosun Stormchaser was still in the rigging, loading her gun and emptying its contents on Mister Seacaster. She hung upside down with only her feet wrapping in ropes keeping her from falling in order to keep both hands free.

Mister Seacaster was not doing well. His hooked hand was gone, as well as a part of his sleeve. Ayda didn’t want to look at it too much, feeling a little nauseated at the sight. He was very badly hurt. The Bombardier wasn’t.

“Mister Seacaster!” she shrieked. “He’s in trouble! We need to help him!”

“William can take care of himself, love. This is something he wants to do and he has to do on his own.” Ayda snapped her head towards them, away from the window behind which the battle for the future of Leviathan took place. They couldn't be serious about that, could they? Seeing her outrage, Garthy quickly clarified: “That’s not to say we can’t help him. But our best way to do so is to get rid of that nuisance above our heads who tried to blast this ship to the bottom of the seas.”

“But how?”

Garthy pursed their lips for a second, their face doing something complicated. Just when she thought they would admit they had no clue, they veered up. “I have a plan,” they said, standing up without letting go of her hand and through the crowd they guided her to the entrance of the Row and the Ruction, giving the both of them a better view of the havoc wreaked upon the marketplace and the two duelists who were circling each other like sharks. 

“Do you have any damaging spells left?” Garthy asked.

“Only cantrips. But I need to be within thirty feet for that.” The gondola elevators were the only forms of transportation that could take them there, but everyone in Leviathan knew how excruciatingly slow those things were, and Bill didn't have that long. Ayda could fly up there, but the thought of taking on Bosun Stormchaser - the woman who had so nearly taken Ayda’s life - all on her own made her blood run cold. She wanted to be brave, but she wasn’t sure she could be _that_ brave.

“Marvelous,” Garthy said, completely unironic. They were smiling as if their plan had already worked. “Hold my hand.” She hesitantly grabbed their perfectly-manicured hand, unsure of their intentions. Did they want her to carry them up to the Mast Hearth? She was nowhere strong enough to lift them.

Garthy squeezed once, asking her to trust them like they trusted her. She did, all hesitation dissipating.

Garthy was still breathing in the steady 4-7-8 pattern, gazing at the sky as they calmly tucked their dangling hair back behind their ears. Ayda watched as their metallic eyes slowly fell shut and their last exhale was an extended sigh that lasted way longer than eight seconds. Her initial curious guess was that they were casting a spell, even though she was distantly aware that Garthy had no spells that bestowed the ability to fly or teleport.

What she hadn’t expected was for them to start glowing. A gold hue encompassed their frame, forming a radiant halo behind them. The golden halo threaded itself through their skin, blazed through their clothes, dancing like a gilded fire until the flaring beams of light coalesced into a solid yet incorporeal shape.

A pair of luminous demonic wings sprouted behind them, barely connected to the skin of their bandaged back. They resembled those of a bat, but made of pure golden light.

“I didn’t know you had those,” Ayda whispered, staring up at her guardian who had never looked so much like an angel. They were beautiful.

Garthy smiled and beat their newly materialized wings once, creating a gust of wind that sent dust and earth scattering up into the air. “I keep them for special occasions like this. They’re only gonna be here for just a minute, so it’s for the best if we make quick work of this.”

Hand in hand, they flew up into the orange and yellow sky. Bosun Stormchaser was only a dark shape against the light of the setting sun, but her outline was clean enough to make out that the woman had swung her musket around and was now aiming for the two winged spellcasters. She had to use both hands to support the large gun, so her right elbow was hooked around a hanging net to stay steady in the mast formation. It started to dawn on Ayda what Garthy was up to.

“Aim for the ropes,” they instructed. After pressing a quick kiss to her forehead, they moved closer to the bosun, leaving a cold spot where their hand had held onto hers. Ayda gathered all her courage and called upon her fire. It came so easy to her, as it always had.

The bolt streaked past Garthy and found purchase on the thick rope next to the bosun’s elbow, missing the sleeve of her inky black coat by an inch. It instantly burned away a good portion of the hemp fibers. The woman let out an alarmed cry as she lost purchase and keened backwards. She had no choice but to drop her musket in order to grab a hold of the ropes again.

Ayda went flying after the weapon. It was heavy and it took her a lot of effort to carry it upwards, but she was not letting go of it. A part of her was scared that if she would let it out of her sight either the bosun or the Bombardier would somehow gain possession of it and use it to hurt people. She knew how much this weapon could hurt. That was not going to happen again.

Now defenseless, the bosun snarled like a cornered animal. She stared Garthy down and abruptly started to climb, trying to get away. But Garthy jerked their chin up and a wave of force swept out from them, the clap of pure thunder so powerful Ayda was sure that half Leviathan could hear the booming sound.

The Thunderwave had Ayda’s ears ringing so loud she could barely hear the alarmed scream of Gilly Stormchaser, who was instantly blown back ten feet and lost her grip on the ropes keeping her secured in the rigging. Clawing at the air blindly, she fell backward.

For a fleeting second, Ayda thought Garthy was not going to catch her. They had this steeled glare that was a stark contrast with the image Ayda had of them, of the loving person who had taken her in when she had no one. 

But as much as Garthy hated the woman - and Ayda got the feeling that that plain intimate loathing had only arisen after Garthy had seen a mortally injured Ayda fall out of the sky - they weren’t the kind of person who killed someone because of their personal feelings. Because they were _good_. They were the best she had ever met.

They swooped down and caught the woman by her right arm, the momentum probably dislocating her shoulder. She instinctively tried to get out of their grasp at first, but fell limp when she realized exactly how large the distance was between her and the ground.

Ayda threw the gun away as far as she could and followed Garthy to Mast Hearth, where they dropped Bosun Stormchaser face-first onto the platform. Their wings dissipated into flying golden specks of light just as Ayda’s feet landed on the floor of creaking wooden planks beside them.

About fifteen men and women stood on the platform, taken aback by the two newcomers flying up from below. Some of them immediately drew their guns in a panic. But about a third made no move to engage, uncertainty in their eyes fixated on the unarmed bosun. Garthy pulled out their scimitar and loosely held it in their hand, a surge of blinding divine magic flashing throughout the gold steel. Sensing the air tense, Ayda prepared a firebolt as well, the warmth roiling into a small ball in her hands.

“I think this is the point where you surrender,” Garthy said, pointing the tip of the scimitar at the bosun’s throat.

Bosun Stormchaser wiped some dirt off her mouth with her thumb, slowly rising to her feet. The scimitar moved up with her. She glanced back towards the crew of hunters, whom Ayda had to admit did not look too impressive, many of them quivering with fear. These were the people that had thrown bombs at a market full of people who had nothing to do with the struggle for power in Leviathan, all because their comfortable positions would be endangered if Bill Seacaster took over the throne. They had considered themselves safe this high above, but now they stared into the face of real power, and many of them shook in their boots.

Bosun Stormcaster’s lips curled into a disgusted snarl, looking at her crew. The long strings of her dark hair covered her face and Ayda barely noticed that as she turned back towards the wizard and the aasimar, she let her silver eyes fall shut. Maybe it also had something to do with the fact that two hundred feet below them that after being bombed, stabbed, shot at and dismembered, Mister Seacaster still hadn’t fallen. Maybe she just recognized that Garthy was a powerful spellcaster as well as a great swordsperson and did not want to test who was the better fighter.

“Stand down,” she ordered with a voice that dripped with venom. “We yield.”

* * *

Gilly Stormchaser had stopped trying to put a pound of lead in Bill’s skin.

The pirate captain had no doubts that this great news had to do something with the fact that after appearing out of _nowhere_ , Garthy O’Brien had grown a pair of shiny wings and they and little Ayda Aguefort had flown up, up and away towards Mast Hearth. Because apparently that was a thing they could do now.

He didn’t have much time to be grateful though, because the Bombardier, angered now that his partner wasn’t there to distract his opponent anymore, continued to slash away at Bill with the unmistakable intent of cold-blooded murder in his eyes.

Bill clenched his teeth. His fighting style had become all instinct, not being granted enough time to come up with some kind of strategy. His increasingly belated parries had saved him so far, except that unfortunate time a minute ago when the Bombardier had broken through his defense and had cleaved his hook off, taking a good inch of his wrist with it. His left hand was a distracting source of throbbing pain and it was difficult to concentrate on anything else.

“You're on lee shore, Bill,” the Bombardier smirked as it became increasingly clear that Bill was not in a state to give any meaningful offense.

The man was a talker. The entire fight he’d been goading and provoking, delighting in hearing the sound of his own voice. Usually Bill made quick work of talkers, since they were too self-focused to put up a strong defense. This time he’d been a little too preoccupied with hell raining down on him and his opponent being as unbothered by it as if it was a light summer storm.

“You’re a carouser, a glorified highwayman who got lucky too many times. The future of piracy is coming, Bill Seacaster, and _you don’t fit anymore_.” He twirled his sword around Bill’s and Bill simply no longer had the strength to keep holding onto the weapon anymore. His cutlass flew out of his hand and clattered to the cobblestones of the marketplace a good ten feet away from him. A kick to the shin followed, forcing Bill on his knees. The Bombardier had him at swordpoint, leering in satisfaction as it was confirmed to him that the battle had been won.

“A future in which the innocents of Leviathan are damned to death?” Bill yelled out, trying to blink the black spots at the edge of his vision away.

“There are no innocents on Leviathan.” The Pirate King grabbed the hilt of his sword with both his hands, swinging back for a decapitating blow. He cocked an eyebrow that mockingly asked if the great pirate had anything to say at all.

Bill thought of sweet Ayda, and how she had blown herself up along with James Whitclaw’s whole crew, and he thought of noble Jamina, who had crushed four pirates to death when she introduced herself to them. Underprivileged people like young Alistair would be forced into a life of crime while the prosperous like Garthy chose it. That was the way of Leviathan and it was exactly how Bill liked it.

“Maybe ye’re right,” Bill grinned, spitting a clot of blood mixed with saliva out of his mouth. If these were to be his last words, then so be it. “But innocent or not, we’re all in the same damned boat.”

A battle wasn’t won until the opponent was dead on the ground. Gloating brought downfall, and Bill wasn’t planning on dying yet. He had too many tricks on his sleeve for that. From his pocket he retrieved the Seed of the Underwater Forest, the cursed gem that had been the reason for Bill to return to Leviathan. “Take this, Mitchell!”

He tossed the stone to his opponent, knowing that for wolves like the Bombardier, greed would always go before caution. The king lowered his blade and instinctively snatched the gem out of the air, exactly as Bill had predicted. The red glow of the ruby reflected in the Bombardier’s eyes as he looked from the gem to his pinned opponent with mild confusion.

“You’re not seriously trying to buy your way out of—” he began scornfully, but faltered when the treasure started to pulsate in his hand like a beating heart.

The effect was immediate and devastatingly unfair. Just like with poor Old Mickers, that blood-red reflection turned pitch-black as the gem lost all its warmth and an inky liquid darkness oozed out of the cracked facets, building themselves up into solid pseudopods that like a whip of lightning attached themselves to the Bombardier’s jade eyes. It was a horrid sight that made Bill bare his teeth in a vicious grin.

“Almost forgot I had that,” he commented over the king’s terrified screaming, dusting off his shirt as he rose to his feet.

“Seacaster!” Mitchell screamed, clawing frantically at his eyes. The black pulsing matter was boring through his eye sockets, slowly pushing to his brain. Old Mickers had had the luxury of a nearby cleric who rushed over to quickly heal him. The Bombardier did not. “You can’t do this to me! Stop this, please!” When his useless pleading hit a wall of vicious indifference like waves crashing against cold stone cliffs, his voice turned back into poison. “I’m your king! You should obey me!”

“Bill Seacaster obeys only one law,” Bill said, wiping away the blood on his mouth with the back of his hand. The Bombardier made a blind swipe for Bill but missed by a foot. “And that’s the law of the Blade!”

His cutlass was out of his reach, but any self-respecting pirate always had a backup. He drew his long dirk from his pocket and stabbed the blade right through the Bombardier’s mouth, pushing it down through the tissue of his tongue and the marrow of bone until the pointed end stuck out of the lower back of the king’s skull.

The Bombardier gurgled in panic, rapidly choking in his own blood. He grasped for the blade, but Bill’s hand was still firmly holding it in place, unforgiving and unrelenting. He was ending this.

The struggle faded and the hands around the dagger became limp. Bill held him in his grasp. “When ye meet the devil, warn him that I’ll come for him too,” he whispered in the man’s ear as the Bombardier’s body shuddered violently one last time and then became very still.

It was over.


	5. For What We Need Most Now Is Unity's Seed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from _Ashes _by the Longest Johns.__

The Bombardier was dead.

The overwhelming rush of victory hit Bill with the force of a tidal wave and the ground seemed to become increasingly unsteady, like he was a young sailor boy standing on the deck of a ship for the first time again. He blinked and discovered that he was suddenly sprawled on the uneven cobblestones of the plaza, his bruised face meeting the last traces of light from the setting sun. He didn’t feel like standing up; he’d earned a hard victory and this was his way of celebrating.

Or maybe it was just that Bill was going into shock. _Eh. Who knows. One of the two_ , he thought distantly as his eye drifted shut. He was bleeding profusely and the blood loss was making his mind go a bit foggy.

He lay down like that for a while, faintly aware that he probably looked just as dead as the crowned corpse next to him. The puddle of blood around the Bombardier started to gradually expand, soaking Bill’s hair and clothes.

“Oh no, they didn’t kill each other, did they?” a familiar smooth voice asked full of uncharacteristic worry.

“I think Mister Seacaster is still breathing,” another person said, more matter-of-factly but not any less concerned.

Bill opened his one eye and saw that Garthy and Ayda had made their way down in one of those gondola elevators and were now carefully approaching the pirate. More people had assembled on the square but none had dared to go anywhere near the two bodies, superstitious as all pirates were.

“That I most certainly still am, lassie!” He scrambled to his feet, almost stumbling again in the process. “O’Brien! Ye’ve got perfect timing!”

Garthy exhaled in relief. “You’re alive.” They glanced at the dead body of the individual that had been a threat to the continued existence of both the Gold Gardens as well as the entire island and opened their mouth, only to close it again and shake their head in resignation. After a short pause they said: “William, darling, I’m not going to raise my voice at you because you and Ayda did a really special thing today. But I’m still going to need you to explain how all of _this_ ,” gesturing at the scene around them, “happened when I left you two alone for _three minutes_.”

“Needn’t have worried, me good friend, the girl was in good hands.” He showed his bleeding lack of a left hand and chuckled through the pain. “Or should I say, hand?!” His chuckle turned into a wheezing laugh, swatting his knee as Garthy pointedly rolled their eyes.

“Oh, for— get over here.” They grabbed the stump and put their hand a few inches above the wound. A greenish-white light trickled down from their hand into Bill’s, and the pain ceased. By the time they were done, the tissue had regrown and the wound had healed over completely. Bill was going to need a new hook, but that beat bleeding out. “There.”

“Nice trick ye got there.” He snickered some more and pulled his friend into a grateful embrace. “With the wings too. Really saved me ass back there.”

“Next time we do business, we’re doing it far away from my home, yeah?” They snorted and playfully pushed the man away, grimacing at the splotches of blood and viscera that were now staining their silk clothes due to the hug. Wiping it off as best as they could they turned around and walked back to where Ayda was watching them intensely. Bill chuckled some more, feeling just a little light-headed, and rolled his handless wrist. Garthy had taken hold of Ayda’s hand and smiled tenderly at her as she was leaning against their legs with a look of exhausted contentment.

Bill felt a pang of homesickness which surprised him to his very core. He had never considered any place his ‘home’. But as he beheld the quiet love that tied Ayda and Garthy together, he was reminded of the only steadfast love he had ever known.

“William?” Garthy asked. They had been looking at him for a while, he realized, and he had stared back with glazed-over eyes. “What are you just waggling around there? You’ve got a speech to make, love.”

“That I do, O’Brien.” Bill grinned, snapping out of his thoughts. He retrieved his cutlass and gave the lifeless body of the King of Leviathan a kick for good measure, then he crouched down and yanked the stiff head up by the greasy ponytail. The metal blade of his sword sliced clean through the Bombardier’s neck, adding even more blood to the already considerable pool around him.

“Was that really necessary?” Garthy commented, shielding Ayda’s eyes with their hand even though the girl was already determinedly averting her gaze from the violence.

“I thought ye were the one who knew how ‘n when to make a show outta something.” The severed head dangled in front of him and with his stomp Bill tapped his chin, considering. How big of a show was _he_ going to make out of this? “Miss Ayda? Hold yer friendship book close. We might need it.”

“What?” she frowned, still refusing to look in the direction of Bill and the dead man. Bill offered no clarification. She’d understand soon enough. With his shoulders pulled back and a suddenly very clear goal in mind he strode to the centre of Gibbety Square.

“Alright, avast ye, ye buncha bilge-sucking sons of a biscuit eater!” He kicked down a stack of wooden crates to use one as an improvised podium. Before he stepped on it he grabbed a spear that had been left when the square had been evacuated and unceremoniously shoved it through the Bombardier’s severed head, piking him as a warning to all those who planned to cross Bill Seacaster, vanquisher of kings. The sight was gruesome and effective.

People who had fled from the warfare that was being raged on the plaza were now swarming in, pointing and whispering, unsure about what exactly had happened. Bill watched as more and more bruised and battered people trickled out of the Row and the Ruction, staring at the grotesque warning that had been made out of their king with slack jaws. Aarakocra and apefolk were gathering in the rigging that led to the Crow’s Keep, looking down at the display. The bombings had been heard over the entire island and had drawn a large audience of curious and worried citizens. There were most likely thousands of people gathering.

Bill pulled his shoulders back and planted the pike with the still bleeding head of Johnas Mitchell into the ground.

He was very aware that Leviathan’s attention was all on him.

“We’re gonna change some things now,” his voice boomed. “Me name’s Bill Seacaster, Captain of the Hangman, scourge of the Celestine Sea, and,” he glanced over to Ayda, who was clutching her book and staring at him with an open mouth, “husband to me wife and father to me son.” Before he stepped on the crate he took the Bombardier’s golden crown and placed it on his own head, replacing the tricorn hat he had worn for years. The weight of it felt all wrong, but he could not afford to show weakness now.

“This fancy piece o’ gilded metal means I’m wearin’ the big pants now, and all ye weevil raft-riders’ll listen to me.” He scanned the crowd with narrowed eyes, searching for any kind of defiance against this new rulership. He looked a little too far to the left, where Ayda and Garthy were standing, Garthy with both their hands resting on Ayda’s shoulders. Ayda still had that look of childish excitement and complete trust that everything was going to be alright, but Garthy’s eyes had narrowed so much the gold was barely visible. _What are you doing, William_? they seemed to say.

Bill winked, which was basically just blinking his one eye, but he knew his friends would get it. He turned back to his audience.

“Me first new rule: Raids on the Compass Point Library are now forbidden at the penalty of death. Only way to get those blasted books is by getting a, errrh…”

“Membership card,” Ayda helpfully stage-whispered to him. Her light confusion was gone and she winked back, immediately getting flustered when people’s attention shifted on her. She quickly took a step back and hid behind Garthy’s legs.

“Aye, a membership card. Savvy?” It didn’t seem like the stunned crowd fully understood what he was saying, but Ayda was smiling, so that was enough for him.

Both of them knew that no one could stop a pirate from stealing something that didn’t belong to them, but there was a chance that there would be fewer raids this way, and that was enough. Someone smarter than Bill could figure out the technicalities.

“Second of all.” He pointed his still bloodied sword towards a figure standing in the back of the crowd, close to a market stall that Bill and the Bombardier had completely demolished in their fight. “Ye see that mast of a woman over there? Her name’s Jamina Joy, though ye might know her as the Joyless. If she’s willing, I’m appointing her the new Bosun of Leviathan, as we’re in need of one and she’s the only old salt that actually wants this place to be livable.” He waved for the warforged to approach.

Jamina’s expression was hard to read, being made out of stone and metal and all, but she obliged and came over without protest. The crowd parted for her to clear a path. Many whispers arose, some of which Bill could pick up if he strained his ears. The name ‘Joyless’ was hushed in reverent breaths. It appeared that Bill and Ayda weren’t the only ones whose lives Jamina had saved, either during her time as a vigilante or today when she was helping evacuate the square.

“King William Seacaster.” She dropped to one knee, the sound of metal slamming against stone cobbles reverberating through the marketplace. But even in a deferent position, she continued to hold her head raised proudly. “Thank you. I will try to be worthy.” Bill held his hand out for her, grinning from ear to ear. Her tripod claw clasped his forearm and loud cheers erupted when he helped her up on her robotic feet.

It was good that at least one of his decisions was popular, because his next probably wasn’t going to be.

“Third and final thing.” As Jamina stepped away to stand behind the new King of Leviathan, Bill took the crown off his head and held it in his right hand. The gold it was cast from was shinier than any treasure he had ever found and the rubies and emeralds were so clean-cut he could see his own reflection in them. The eye that stared back at him was weary. He saw the face of a man who had traveled to every corner of the world and had seen almost everything that life had to offer him. But there was one thing he had been running from, and not even this gods-damned crown could give it to him.

“I’ve been a legend,” he said, not shouting anymore. He didn’t give a shit that people wouldn’t be able to hear him; this speech was meant for only a few people, not all of them present. “Me dad would’ve been proud o’me, but he’s not the one I call me family. Me real family’s far away.”

What he wouldn’t give for Hallariel and little Fabian to be here, to see that their husband and daddy was making the right decision for once.

“A new chapter of me life is gonna start soon. But not in this tar-reeking shithole ye grease wads call a city.” He tightened his grip around the cold metal of the crown for one more second, momentarily pained by all the profitable possibilities he was wasting with his decision, even though he knew it was the right one. Then the crown clattered on the ground, thrown away like it was an inconsequential piece of garbage. Before it had finished spinning around its own axis like a coin, Bill spat on it, the profane gesture drawing a few scattered indignant gasps from the crowd. “All that to say, I’m not gonna be yer king.”

“Then what happens now?” Jamina Joy said from behind him. “Will you appoint a new king?”

Bill glanced towards Ayda and Garthy, the latter of whom was glaring back with a firm ‘ _absolutely not_ ’. He wasn’t eying the entrepreneur though, instead seeking to meet the gaze of the little phoenix girl who was holding onto Garthy’s leg like it was a lifeline in a storm.

“Young Miss Ayda Aguefort,” he started, internally chuckling at how Ayda questioningly pointed at herself with her eyes wide in horror and shook her head frantically, “can ye remind an old seadog how things are done on a ship on the open sea? How do we make decisions?”

Even after she was restored from the shock of what she initially thought Bill was going to ask, it took Ayda a moment to gather the courage to open her mouth. She glanced at the book she was holding firmly, the one she’d shown Bill in the library, but didn’t open it. She didn’t need to. After a second of hesitation she scraped her throat. “A crew… they listen to each other, and while the captain has the final say, they make decisions together.”

Bill gave her a grateful incline of his head and returned his focus on the crowd, spreading his arms wide. “If this is possible on a ship, why shouldn’t it be possible in Leviathan? Give everyone a say? We can build our own city!” He stepped once again on the platform, feeling like a judge announcing his own death sentence in front of the many spectators, hungry for either the perfect solution or gallons of spilled blood. “So, Leviathan, whaddaya say? No Kings for a Captain!”

In the silence that followed, the kind in which everyone seemed to hold their breaths, there was a small sliver of uncertainty. The people of Leviathan had lived under the rulership of a king for as long as the city was afloat. Who was to say that they’d accept this new change? A pirate captain had a lot to fear in this big world, but there was one thing that was more dangerous than anything else.

Mutiny.

Bill didn’t notice how tense he was until the sound of slow clapping almost made him flinch. It didn’t carry far at first, until all of a sudden the sound was so loud it could be heard all over the square. Everyone in the crowd turned their heads towards the source of the sound.

Garthy O’Brien raised one eyebrow at the scrutiny. Ayda subtly cast thaumaturgy to enhance the resonance of their voice. “What are you all looking at me for? The man’s an absolute buffoon, but he’s got that one thing right at least.”

“No Kings for a Captain!” someone in the back of the crowd shouted. As if they had been waiting for a sign and that had been it, the entire crowd erupted in a roaring cheer.

“No Kings for a Captain!” sounded through the square.

“No Kings for a Captain!” sounded through the entire island for the rest of the day.

And that was how Leviathan lost her last monarch.

* * *

“You’re leaving? Right now? After all that?”

Once William’s speech was done, Garthy had returned to the Gardens after having sent an invitation for the elder pirates of the Ramble to join them. Save for a few traditionalists who had sworn bloody vengeance upon Bill Seacaster and all that supported him, many had come to debate about the future of the island. Within the first twenty minutes it was decided that the Ramble would be reinstated as the official government building. After this initial agreement a bar fight had broken out and Garthy had called it a night.

William had been with them for a whole forty minutes until he had fallen asleep on his chair, his chin resting on his chest. He was most likely simply bored by the debate and the subsequent fight – which did indeed lack a certain level of excitement, even for Garthy’s standards. But the angelic descendant had given the old captain the benefit of the doubt, excusing themselves and William from the room by saying that they were both thoroughly spent after the events of the day.

William had responded to his freedom by sneaking out of his arranged room and to the exit of the Gardens. One of Garthy’s wards had tipped them off and they had managed to intercept the man in the entrance hall.

“I know it isn’t the most thrilling job, but they could really use your expertise right now, darling.”

William was of course unaffected by the impresario’s words. “Eh, they’ll figure it out, somehow. And if they don’t, they’ve got the Hangman’s address.” He thought about the logic of that sentence for a second, then shrugged dismissively. “I’m takin’ the Ardent and settin’ sail. I gotta be elsewhere.” The sloop that had brought William to Leviathan had been sunk by the Bombardier’s people earlier that day, so he had been given permission to sail on the Ardent, Gilly Stormchaser’s old ship. Seeing that the former bosun had gotten a lifetime stay in the Brig, she wasn’t in much need of it anymore.

“And you’re certain you don’t need me to take a look at that cursed gem?”

“Are ye pullin’ me leg? This is gonna be me best keepsake yet! Just gotta make sure it stays out of Fabian’s reach and I’m golden!”

Garthy rolled their eyes. They despised how stern they came off – usually they weren’t playing the part of the _responsible_ one – but they knew that they were one of the few people in this world that Bill Seacaster would listen to, and they were not about to lose that privilege by going soft on the pirate.

“Did you say goodbye to Ayda?” they asked.

An hour ago Bobby had brought the little phoenix to bed and the radiant aasimar who loved Ayda like a sister later reported that the exhausted girl had passed out in a matter of seconds. Garthy still hadn’t found the switch in their head that could make them stop worrying about her, not even now that they knew she was safe in her own bed.

“She was sleepin’ like a log. Didn’t wanna wake her up.” Bill shrugged.

Well, that wouldn’t do. They cast a quick message cantrip into the direction of Ayda’s room, reaching the unconscious mind of their beloved ward. _Darling, sorry for waking you, but William is leaving. Care to join us?_

The initial response was a drowsy groan, but after a few seconds Garthy could feel Ayda startle awake and she hastily replied: _Wait for me!_

“Always,” Garthy mumbled under their breath, even though the cantrip had already faded and she wouldn’t be able to hear the whispered words.

William scoffed. Garthy imagined that if the captain had a clockwork piece he’d be looking at it impatiently as if he was in some kind of rush. They were having none of it.

“Do you know that dear Bobby or I can’t leave her bedside until she falls asleep?” they started. “She says it’s the monsters, but every dolt with a bit of a brain understands that she’s afraid we are going to abandon her one day.”

She was so remarkable, so different from other children. It was hard sometimes, to help her grow up while she had the exact same eyes as the woman who helped Garthy become the person they were today. They owed her for all their childhood’s happy memories, but what they felt was so much more than that. It was love.

“You want to be a better parent? Then you will not be another memory of a man who left without saying goodbye to her, William Seacaster, understand?”

William cast his eyes down, almost ashamed. Wonder of wonders, apparently miracles still existed. “Savvy,” he grunted.

They waited a few minutes in a silence that Garthy experienced as comfortable, although they weren’t sure William was feeling the same. Then the door of the entrance hall opened and slipping through it was Ayda, dressed in her silk nightgown with the Gardens logo and orange feathers embroidered on it. Still groggy with sleep, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist, but stopped short in the action when she spotted the pirate captain. A beaming smile broke out on her face.

“Goodbye, Bill.” Half collapsing, she pressed her face against his leg and hugged it. “Be happy.”

All of William’s toughness and uncompromising attitude melted. “Ye as well, lass. Ye as well.” He detached her from his leg and hunched down, grabbing her by her shoulder. “Ye’re gonna show yer old man who's the best wizard of all the lands one day, eh?”

Garthy hissed through their teeth, startled that William knew about Arthur Aguefort. It was a sore subject for the girl and one they tended to carefully dance around.

Ayda frowned.

“I think I’m just going to be myself for now,” she said thoughtfully.

William nodded respectfully and patted her cheek. Ayda smiled drowsily and once William had released her she walked over to Garthy, automatically reaching for their hand.

“Well,” William smirked, rising from the floor, “I think I’ll take me leave then. I’ll see ye lot in hell!” He exposed his teeth in a broad grin, ruffling the girl’s hair one last time. “Well, except for young Miss Ayda Aguefort. Ye’ll make it far, lass.”

He crossed the room to the entrance, and looked over his shoulder one last time. “Go with love, me hearties.” Then he walked out of the Gardens and to the docks, leaving behind a city forever changed.


	6. The Friends We Are Leaving We'll Never Forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small epilogue wrapping up the events of the story.  
> This final chapter title is from the capstan shanty _Goodbye Fare-Ye-Well _, also known as _Homeward Bound _.____

Ayda Aguefort was standing somewhere in the middle of a tall ladder on rails that reached all the way to the ceiling of the Compass Points Library. Her left hand was keeping three books clutched tightly to her chest while she was gently stroking the spines of the tomes in the bookcases with her right hand.

She had been searching the Library for three hours now, but nowhere had she found any evidence that her previous versions had had any interest in the study of friendship or emotions.

It was a shame that a woman, so lonely in her self-made tower of learning, had only observed instead of interacted with the world around her. It was scary, yes–– Ayda still had nightmares about that bullet that had never come, and even more about the one that had. Garthy had gone back to the Gardens and hadn’t left yet, although they had made promises that she believed they would keep. The world was very scary.

But it was real.

She huffed in annoyance when her final hope of finding a good spot to put her new books in was crushed. Ayda had wrongly interpreted her notes that this was the shelf that contained books about found family, but instead there were only several dusty biographies about separated families reuniting on shelf CG-23.

Not willing to come down and consult her notes again just yet, she climbed further up the ladder and sat down on the top sport, resting her back against the bookcase. She could see the entire library from up here. On her right the east section was being rebuilt with the help of a team of Bill’s old contacts. Despite the noise of the construction work, a few people were napping or perusing the books and the entire library was filled with an unusual peaceful atmosphere.

She spotted Rawlins somewhere in a corner, solemnly putting the pieces on a chessboard back in the right position. As if he felt her gaze upon him, he looked up and their eyes met. His skin wrinkled as he shot her a smile that showed his rotting teeth, and gestured to the board, inviting her for a match. Remembering the last time she played against him and lost within three moves, she shook her head. Rawlins nodded, returning to his work.

She looked at the three books on her lap. Each time she saw the cursive letters of the titles, her belly made a weird dance of happiness and an involuntary smile curved her lips. _The Misfit Team_ , _How To Do Platonic Relations,_ and _A Study On Emotional Bonds_. They, alongside _The Chaos of Crews,_ would form the first books in her new collection. Garthy had given them to her a week after Mister Seacaster had left.

There were enough empty spots in the library where her new books could theoretically fit, but they would feel oddly out of place between ancient tomes about arcane spellcraft and countless volumes of dense encyclopedias. Ayda liked structure.

Maybe she could forget about what already existed, and create a new part of the library. She could go down to the construction workers and put in a request. A new section, dedicated to friendship.

The possibility of it all was new and exciting.

With her books in her hands and one of her homes below her, she let the bubbling feeling of joy roam free and smiled.

\---

“HOME!” Bill yelled loud enough to scare an albatross seated on the hull of the ship into frantically flapping away. He put his fists to his sides and tapped the peg leg that functioned as a foot on the wooden floor of the Hangman, happy to be home. His ship was anchored in the harbor of Bastion City under a fake alias.

It hadn’t been the first place he’d gone to, but the rented penthouse Hallariel and Fabian had been staying in for the past three months had been empty. Bill figured his wife and son were drinking tea with Cathilda on the Hangman like they often did when Bill was away on pirate business. So that was how he found himself on the scrubbed deck of his beloved ship.

Cathilda was the first to greet him, immediately coming over to fuss over the loss of his hand and the big dark bags under his eyes. He gave her a peck on her cheek in return.

“William? Is that you, darling?” From belowdecks, Hallariel Lomenelda-Seacaster emerged. She had her silvery hair pinned up and was wearing a silk sleeping gown despite it being almost 6 PM. She was what Bill imagined a goddess would look like. “You’re back earlier than expected.”

“Woulda been back sooner, if I hadn’t had to pick this up first.” He showed her the sepia brown pigskin suitcase affixed to his new prosthetic hook. He had been dragging the thing with him the entire day, ever since he left that blasted Bastion City courthouse in the morning. “It’s a present for ye.” Hallariel seemed unimpressed as she took it from him and opened it, all too used to Bill’s whimsical gifts he brought with him from faraway places. 

Inside was a stack of papers, all neatly stapled together. The logo of the government of Solace was printed on top. A whole string of official juridical terms followed that Bill had only paid half attention to when they had been explained to him that day. 

Hallariel brought her fingers to her rose-colored lips, leafing through the contract with an expression of shock and disbelief.

“Are you serious?” she whispered. Her slender hands were trembling, one thumb stroking the last page where Bill had signed his signature – only a simple ‘x’, since Bill had never learned how to write. Bill grabbed her hands and placed them against his chest, next to his beating heart.

“Aye,” he said solemnly. “We can’t keep sailin’ on like this. If we want that boy to have a future, he’s gonna need a stable home on the mainland.”

“A deal. With the government of Solace.”

“I’ve been pardoned,” he confirmed. “No more roamin’ the seas, no more huntin’ treasures. I’m gonna be an upstandin’ citizen from now on.” Well, as upstanding as anyone with a past on the account could ever be.

Usually the process of a pirate being pardoned from his crimes took up a lengthy amount of time, but the Solacian officials had been so shell-shocked that the greatest pirate who ever lived had walked into their courthouse yesterday morning, genuinely willing to forgo his life of crime, that they had accelerated it as much as possible, terrified that he’d change his mind on the spot and start plundering again.

Speaking of shell-shocked, Hallariel was starting to look a little paler than she usually did.

Bill kept talking. “I thought we could buy a house with a big pool where little Fabian can learn how to swim, and ye can get yerself one of those sen’sry deprithingies ye’ve always wanted, and Cathilda–– Uumpf!”

Hallariel had dropped the affidavit to the ground and interrupted Bill’s ardent plans for the future with a fervent kiss on his lips.

“Gross!” a familiar voice that gave a _pang_ in Bill’s heart cried out. “Papa!”

Fabian Aramais Seacaster came hollering onto the deck, a wooden practice sword in his hands and one of Bill’s old tricorn hats tilted on his head. Cathilda had made Bill swear he wouldn’t give the seven-year-old a real sword. Yet. With the speed and force of a cannonball the boy jumped up in his father’s arms. “Your hand!” he yelled.

“I lost it in battle!” Bill yelled back just as enthusiastically, hugging his son so tight he could hear his little ribs crack and Fabian had to call uncle. With a grunt Bill sat down on one of the barrels and put the kid down. “Hello there, ye sly scallywag! Ye wanna hear the story of how yer old man killed a king?”

With a cheer Fabian eagerly took place on Bill’s lap and Bill started spinning his yarn. Though the tale was one of action and legendary battles, his thoughts drifted to a young wizard girl who terribly missed and resented a father she had never met, and he swore that he’d never leave Fabian alone like that, not until he physically had to be dragged into hell. His darling boy deserved a father who put his child’s promising career before his own.

He glanced back; Hallariel was still on the same spot, Solace’s pardon crinkling in her tight grasp. A tear was making its way down her cheek as she watched the two men she loved most. Bill couldn’t begin to imagine what she was feeling, but his heart told him that most of it was love.

Cathilda was standing beside her, one hand on the small of Hallariel’s back, the other placed on her heart. She was overflowing with proud joy.

Bill paused his story to look at them, to really _see_ these people that were worth crossing oceans and killing kings. 

Before this, they were a household, sown together only by the promise of vows and blood. Now they could finally begin living life as a family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome at the end, me hearties!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you had a good time!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr as 'supine-dreamer', or, if you want to talk some more about pirates, 'gentlewoman-of-fortune'! I really fucking love pirates.
> 
> Thank you d20BB mods, you are amazing. The effort you have put into this project is incredibly appreciated.
> 
> And again, to my partner Micah, you are the best my dude. Ayda brainrot forever <3
> 
> Last shoutout to my lovely beta Beth! Without her, this fic would contain a thousand incorrect articles, and I am grateful to her. She actually has written her own fic for the BB! Go check out the fic, 'let the wolves sing' by macaronidoodles.
> 
> Goodbye, me mateys. I'll see ye lot again.


End file.
